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A.I., cybersecurity and more
23 Plays1 day ago
Bryon Jackson, associate VP of Technology, Solutions and Innovation), discusses how rapidly changing technologies are impacting CSULB and higher education.
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Transcript
Introductions and Podcast Overview
00:00:17
Speaker
Welcome back to at the beach, the official podcast of Cal State Long Beach. I'm Dan Montoya, vice president of university relations and development. And today I'm joined by someone who keeps our digital world running smoothly.
00:00:31
Speaker
Brian Jackson. Brian serves as our associate vice president of technology solutions and innovations in the information technology division.
00:00:41
Speaker
He's a double alum, both bachelor's in marketing and an MBA in information systems from CSULB, and he's working toward an EDD at Fresno State.
00:00:52
Speaker
We're thrilled to have you on the podcast, Brian. Thanks for being here. Yeah, thank you for having me. I really appreciate the invitation. Awesome.
IT Division Responsibilities and Roles
00:00:59
Speaker
So not everybody on campus understands what the IT division does behind the scenes.
00:01:05
Speaker
Could you give us a sense of what your team is responsible for and how those responsibilities connect back to our broader mission of education and innovation?
00:01:17
Speaker
Yeah, well, the easy the easy answer is everything we do in our division is for the mission of the university in advancing teaching and learning. yeah Every single thing that we do. So what we do is is it's quite broad. There are a lot of things that are behind the scenes and a lot of things that are in front of you know front customer facing. So looking at it from like the high level, we do wired and Wi-Fi networks.
00:01:37
Speaker
So we connect the students, faculty, administration to the campus, telephony, desktop support for many divisions, not all, but many of them. We make sure they're they're taken care of as far as their computing needs go.
00:01:49
Speaker
um We do computer software training, software distribution for students and faculty. Digital signage across campus. So the marquees, the displays you see across campus, the giving a platform for those that do content providing, including folks in your organization, StratCom, giving that platform.
00:02:07
Speaker
On the academic side, we do high performance computing environments. So like research computing, that was something that our CIO, Min Yao, challenged us to do, provide a better computing environment for our researchers, attract new researchers, a better curriculum for students, new platforms in that way.
AI Infrastructure at the University
00:02:23
Speaker
And then on the forefront of things, AI, right? So we're in charge of the AI infrastructure for campus. We very quickly responded to the need of AI by launching Microsoft Copilot, which is part of our our existing license agreement with Microsoft.
00:02:36
Speaker
And then making available the chat GPT Edu um agreement with the CSU. We were on the forefront of that to make sure that those tools were in the hands of our students and faculty. On the not so customer facing side, we do a lot of things behind the scenes like security and compliance. yeah So the things that go really unnoticed but are equally important, as well as IT t governance. So even though we're the central division of IT t for the campus, we you know IT t is decentralized across divisions, colleges.
00:03:06
Speaker
And so we're kind of that glue. We work very closely with techs and their leadership to make sure that the standards we produce are you know used across campus. And so if we have centrally provided tools that we use them responsibly and they're like gatekeepers for us and they help us understand the customer need and that helps the campus be really
IT Division as University's Operating System
00:03:25
Speaker
secure.
00:03:25
Speaker
And then we're also really heavily involved with CSU-wide committees. So I participate on a number of CSU-wide committees from HPC to AI groups. So what we do at the campus is also you know sort of broadcasted across the CSU system.
00:03:40
Speaker
I think that's amazing because I look at your what you do in your team. It's kind of like the operating system of a phone, right? It's all good until it doesn't work. And then when it doesn't work, you need to have somebody to make sure it gets up and running. and So a lot of people take that for granted here on campus because we use many of the systems that you mentioned, but then when they go down, it's like, oh.
00:04:02
Speaker
Yeah. What do we do? let's Let's talk a little bit about more of that. Keeping your systems running can't be easy. What are some of the biggest challenges your team faces, whether it's scaling infrastructure or dealing with budget limitations or just staying ahead of constant technological changes? And let's ah break it down for like the layman who's not as tech savvy.
00:04:22
Speaker
Sure. So the analogy you gave is what we do is similar to a phone. I equate it to what we do is similar to running a city. Okay. So the university, you know, we have 40,000 plus people on this campus or not even on this campus, right? We're in this hybrid environment.
00:04:38
Speaker
We have a small city we have to take care of. And within our city, it's it's layered. It's stratified. There are divisions like yours in UR&D, student affairs, student services. There's the administrative side of the university that we take care of. And in those way, we take care of that is very controlled, right? That's where the sensitive data lives.
00:04:56
Speaker
That's where the confidentiality really is important and in protecting the university assets. And so what we do is we control everything from the computers and not just control. We maintain security. We provide, you know, so we run it like a business.
00:05:09
Speaker
then you take a step out from that and you look at like students and faculty. Faculty oftentimes bring their own device, right? It's a BYOD environment. Students almost 100% bring their own devices. But we still have to provide services to them.
00:05:21
Speaker
So we still and have to ensure the security of them, but we can't necessarily touch their device. So it makes it a little bit more difficult for us to manage and challenging for us to provide access to personal devices, but securing the resources in the campus networks and things of that
Transition to Hybrid and Remote Work
00:05:38
Speaker
nature.
00:05:38
Speaker
Right. And then even a further step beyond that, we have a campus community. We have camps on campus. We have visitors, right? So we have guest services that we also have to maintain. So at each point in those stratification of services we provide, there's always challenges from security to services to access. So it's it's like running a city to make sure that everything works from your most secure and tightly controlled all the way to your guest services are people come on campus, they can use your services without any issues.
00:06:07
Speaker
while securing your resources and your and your you know your network. Yeah, that's so good. The pandemic brought a huge shift in hybrid and remote working. you know Our division has really adopted a lot of that and hoteling and and you know making sure our our staff comes in a couple times a week. And so...
00:06:27
Speaker
what What is the hardest part of that transition from your perspective? And what were what were some of the unexpected hurdles in getting digital resources in the hands of students and your team? And how does how does your team tackle those problems? Yeah, good question. So that for us, we were very fortunate. When our vice president, Mignon, came to campus, he challenged us to, and he basically created, set forth the the process to create what we call a Smart Campus Initiative.
00:06:52
Speaker
Yeah. and And part of that initiative and that shift really was to look at our ecosystem and our infrastructure and make sure we're future ready. And so we made conscious decisions to leverage the Microsoft ecosystem. And so when the pandemic hit, we were in a very advantageous position to extend services to our customers when they're not on campus. And so things like Microsoft Teams, we already had enabled. So for to facilitate back-end chat between employees, um we already had Microsoft multi-factor authentication. It was very easy for us to extend telephony, right? We went from this traditional old phone system to leveraging Microsoft Teams for telephony so employees can work wherever they are.
00:07:31
Speaker
Which I'm glad you did because those old phones, they were not good. Being prepared and having this infrastructure in place through our smart campus really enabled us to make that shift very quickly, whereas ah other campuses, they had...
00:07:42
Speaker
bring in three, four, or five different other systems. And in the end, in the long run, that costs them more
Addressing the Digital Divide
00:07:47
Speaker
money. I will say the the most challenging and consequential thing that we found from the student perspective was the digital divide. right So not all of our students actually had access to technology, which was required to learn remote. right So laptops, internet access. Not a unique situation for us. This is something that all universities across the nation had to deal with, is real digital divide. So can you break down digital divide? Sure. We hear it a lot. Yeah. And even students hear it a lot. well what What does that mean?
00:08:13
Speaker
Typically what it means is the rich people usually have the access to the technology and therefore can succeed in environments that use it. On the converse of that is you have students who are from marginalized or minoritized backgrounds.
00:08:25
Speaker
They can't afford the laptop. They can't afford reliable internet. And even if they can, a lot of times it's sharing with multifamilies in the same house. When it comes to access to network, reliable network during the pandemic, when you know, one, the college student is at home and they have siblings also using the internet, also on on in class, they're less advantaged to to keep up with the curriculum. They don't have that real reliable access technology.
00:08:49
Speaker
What we did, and wasn't really unique in the CSU system, but it was very important nonetheless, is we had laptop loan programs, mobile hotspots, and so our mission at that point was to make sure that our students had an equal playing field when it came to the technology. And then I think over time,
00:09:05
Speaker
in the years past the pandemic i think that's just become part of the standard platform for students is to have that access to technology and there's still laptop loan programs throughout the campus for those who can't i think that's so important to define and and help us understand because a lot of times people don't realize what people have and they don't have and i think trying to make it a level playing field for everybody is So important.
Impactful IT Projects and Innovations
00:09:29
Speaker
When we talk about a lot of innovations, there's there's a lot of them that have rolled out ladies lately, right? Like updating, updates to the campus network. We see those all the time. Cloud tools, student services, you name it. What recent projects do you think have made the biggest impact on students and faculty? I mean, keeping with the theme of digital divide and innovation, looking at what we have done for Gen.AI, right? So by providing generative artificial intelligence through tools like ChatGPT Edu, Microsoft Copilot, that's an example of a critical resource that is emerging. It's becoming much more, you know, students are becoming much more reliant on it. yeah And had we not provided those tools, that again would have only benefited those that could afford it. right And so what we recommend to all of our students is to not necessarily use these publicly available tools because what you feed into those only informs and trains the model. you know Your work no longer becomes private work.
00:10:22
Speaker
People unknowingly will upload a paper to it. They'll upload, you know God forbid they upload their taxes or anything else and ask it for analysis. All of that is informing the corpus of what is read by these and AI engines. And and you know likeor so take, for example, a student who may upload their paper to Gen AI agent that it'll be tagged by Turnitin in a future iteration. it's It's informing that AI model that, hey, this work has been done before because it actually reads your things. So providing those tools like ChatGPT, Edu, and Microsoft Copilot that have guardrails, right the things that we provide that you could find in your single sign-on environment, your MyApps environment,
00:10:59
Speaker
They have guardrails. They're not going to inform the public corpus. And so that right there was one of the bigger innovations that we had recently, and it's it's only going to grow. I mean, the reliance on these technologies is only going to grow.
00:11:10
Speaker
The other thing we talked about is just ensuring that our hybrid, hybrid employees continue to work. Right. We talked about, um, one of the big projects we had, was the the migration away from a legacy telephone system on campus.
00:11:22
Speaker
We moved to team's phone. It seems like a very basic, simple thing, but what it allowed us to do is, um, customer service groups, which really had to see on campus five days a week. And so you're limited in how long you could be on campus. They can answer the phone from wherever and whenever.
00:11:36
Speaker
So we saw opportunities for that to really extend our support hours. And really, you know you have a lot more surge opportunities. So if enrollment services has got a lot of calls coming in, they can have people who working remotely jump on the phones too. And then we also blended in video calling capabilities. Since now we're on these platforms, it was really important for us to stay connected to our students. And so for the technology help desk, which is one of my groups,
00:11:58
Speaker
We added a link on our website as well as kiosks on campus where you not only have that phone call capabilities, you actually can do a video call. And it's different than the pandemic era, like, you know, Zoom rooms where you just sit there. This call is literally a telephone call. You can simply enable a video. So when it comes to students who are home, you know, hey, I got this problem on my computer, they can share their screen. Or I got this problem my phone. They can literally show the phone to the camera and it extends our support. And from a security profile, you know, you have ID validation is a big thing. Hackers got really smart during the pandemic with all these people working from home.
00:12:30
Speaker
It's really easy to find information on VP Montoya. yeah And I can call in. I know your date of birth. I know some some information about you. And I can masquerade at you yeah and get the help desk to reset your passwords. I'm now in as you, and that's a major security issue.
00:12:43
Speaker
So when it comes to things like ID validation, it's literally come on camera and show me your driver's license, show me your campus
Cybersecurity Challenges and Measures
00:12:50
Speaker
ID. Those are some of the recent innovations that we've implemented. There's a list of others I can go through, but those are, those are some of the highlights that ah came to mind. Yeah, i remember when when the pandemic, there were people who were actually creating these fake Zoom meetings that looked like people that they knew and they were influencing them in very interesting ways and asking them to do things. And I was like, who does that? But it's it's out there and and it's only going to get more sophisticated.
00:13:16
Speaker
Yeah, we we saw, and this comes up in our compromised accounts, we saw a huge trend of hacking incidents during the pandemic. And really, if you think about it from a simplistic perspective, students were home, employees were home, hackers were home.
00:13:28
Speaker
yeah They had more time to do stuff. They got really creative. When institutions got creative and provided these platforms, the hackers got even more creative and exploited it. So looking ahead, what should we watch out for? Are there initiatives involving AI?
00:13:41
Speaker
machine learning or advanced analytics that we should especially be excited to bring to the beach. Yeah, absolutely. I think over the next you know number of years for the foreseeable future, some forecast way past 2030 timeframe is a greater infusion of AI, and in particular generative AI, yeah ah into the tools that we use. So kind of a combination of infusing those things in the tools that we already use today, as well as the market is so huge. So you constantly have new vendors coming forward and trying to fill a niche perspective. And so
00:14:12
Speaker
For us, the challenge, and even in academia through my my doctorate program, you know really looking at this, there's there's kind of two classes of universities when it comes to generative AI. There are those that teach AI in education.
00:14:24
Speaker
And there are those that are teaching ai education. And so I think we're we're still in this reactive mode where people are still providing the tools in education, the AI tools to help learn. And then we're starting to see that dynamic shift in more and more universities actually teaching it.
00:14:40
Speaker
So take, for example, Ohio State University. In the most recent Chronicle for Higher Education, there was an article that said, You know, by 2029, I think it was, every single student at The Ohio State University will be taught AI literacy as a core competency, as a core thing. And what I mean by AI literacy is not just, yeah, I can go to this tool and use it, but use it responsibly, yeah use it ethically, understand it.
00:15:05
Speaker
So it's more than just knowing it's there and I can prompt it. it's It's how do you effectively use it as a tool. So it's really AI education. And we're starting to see more degree programs. And so I think on the future horizon of of AI, you're going to see that.
00:15:17
Speaker
Very similar to a project we're doing right now. So we have ah an AI project called, we call it our Canvas course co-pilot. So we have actually embedded a Microsoft co-pilot tool.
00:15:29
Speaker
And it's an optional feature that faculty can turn on or off. her course. If it's enabled, what it does is it allows the faculty to use it in two ways. The first way is they could use it to help them in the course. They can use it to build syllabi, to build assessments, to build course curriculum, to help them build that that course.
00:15:46
Speaker
It could also be used by students as this virtual teaching assistant, which is one of the core features of what AI could do. So as a student, you can interact with the curriculum in the class by simply asking it questions. And that differs significantly from going to Copilot or ChatGPT Edu. You're interacting in that case with the corpus, with the entire world of information.
00:16:06
Speaker
If I use this within the course Copilot, I am only interacting with what the faculty provided. And if the faculty turns on web search, it'll tell me this came from the internet. It grounds my knowledge and use of AI in what the faculty is teaching me at a time the faculty teaches it. It doesn't learn new things yet. It hasn't been introduced yet.
00:16:26
Speaker
So take, for example, a marketing class. If the teacher's teaching SWOT, you know, strengths, weakness, opportunity, a threat analysis, I can ask you what is SWOT? You know, tell me more about the strengths. Tell me more about weaknesses.
00:16:39
Speaker
And it will give me answers grounded in the actual course curriculum. And on the flip side, the faculty can see that. Hey, I see 10 students asking about SWOT. I must not be teaching it right or something's not clear. yeah So that's a that's an example of how AI can be leveraged in education to help our students.
00:16:57
Speaker
And I think we're going to see more and more of those things where... AI isn't just this uncontrolled, unregulated, powerful thing. It's something that we can harness for the things that we want it to do.
00:17:08
Speaker
yeah Using the information we want it to use. I think that's that's powerful. And I've always said, if you don't learn it or learn how to use it, you're gonna get left behind. Because it's it's not going away. It's going to only, like you said, generative. like It's going to evolve for generations and different iterations. And I think it's so valuable.
00:17:28
Speaker
that we already have it integrated in what we're doing. and so um I even think as a student, having that capability interact with the professor is valuable because then the professor knows how what i what I need help with and how I can ah you know learn the course material even better. So that's awesome. It even extends beyond that. you know So the other thing that we're looking at from a future future university perspective is how can we augment the services we provide students? So take, for example, a technology help desk.
00:17:57
Speaker
Very, very basic concept of answering the phone. Right now it's relegated to certain open hours, right? Eight to five, nine to six, whatever those are.
Future of AI in Education
00:18:05
Speaker
um But there's no reason why we can't build and we are building a conversational agent, which is basically you call the technology help desk line and it and a computer will answer. a gen generative AI bot will answer. Doesn't sound like the bots of old.
00:18:20
Speaker
Doesn't sound like a robot. It sounds like you're talking to a real human and it'll read the the knowledge base that we put forward. Very specific. You know, tell me how I can. I'm i'm broke. I need help paying my bills. Right. Oh, I'm sorry to hear that. We do have loan programs.
00:18:34
Speaker
So it will carry on a conversation within the knowledge that we tell it to do. And when it reaches a point where it doesn't know, it'll offer the the a handoff to a live human. So it's not to displace or to replace humans. It's to augment and enhance the services we provide. So when it hands it to a human, that human is, you know, I won't say human, my my agent, is working on the more escalated cases. So it frees up people to do the more in-depth, more important sort of responses rather than just questions and answers.
00:19:07
Speaker
Same thing for so SMS, text messages. There's no reason we can't also infuse that in it as well. So the greater having this responsible use of AI for customer facing services only expands possibilities and timeframes that customers can interact with us.
00:19:23
Speaker
You know, our students are are waking up when we're, when we're ah you know, we're going to, we're so we're stopping, you know, they they they're they're nocturnal almost. And so if we're not providing services at the times that they they're at their their peak, then we're not doing them a service. That's awesome. So switching gears cybersecurity staying safe, um because we know it's a huge part of of what your team does, what types of threats are you seeing most often right now? Phishing emails. I know I get a few of them.
00:19:52
Speaker
Ransom attempts and how do you decide where to focus your defense efforts with without giving the playbook away? Yeah, yeah, yeah, we focus our defense on every vector every aspect of threat So there's a lot of things that happen behind the scenes that people never know about right like our systems whether it be firewall or our security suite of of things that look at things like email, they're constantly blocking threats.
00:20:19
Speaker
um and And more and more of those tools are using AI, right? So AI is infused in what they do. It looks for things like, take for example, possible travel. Right. So it knows Dan Montoya is in Long Beach right now.
00:20:33
Speaker
His phone is here. But wait a minute. There's a device over in India right now logged in as Dan Montoya. He can't be in two places at once. That's suspicious. I'm going to suspend his account.
00:20:44
Speaker
So there's a lot of things like that happen today behind the scenes, and there's much, much more of that. But, you know, when it comes to the real prevalent things, you mentioned it, it's phishing, right? the The easiest, the lowest common denominator is is the human, the the person who succumbs to it. They see a message, hey, this is my dean. He wants to talk to me real quick.
00:21:04
Speaker
They just give a quick glance. They don't realize it's from a Gmail account and someone's masquerading as them, right? That's spear phishing. And they call and they start ah they start a conversation. they start a dialogue. And that results in the person giving away or buying gift cards, for example.
00:21:18
Speaker
It doesn't happen often, but that happens. What does happen often for us is phishing that are successfully targeting students. And what generally happens are a hacker will will compromise one student, and then we'll use that email to compromise more students. And if you look at the trends, you know who's getting caught by these phishing? It's predominantly students, almost 99% students over faculty and staff.
00:21:43
Speaker
And it's generally seniors and it's generally towards graduation month. And so you're like, well, why, why is that? Well, the most successful phishing message that we see today are fake job scams.
00:21:54
Speaker
And these are students who are graduating. They want to go and they want to get a job and they see easy money. They inevitably provide the the resources they need, such as the username and password.
00:22:05
Speaker
And we have multi-factor authentication on campus. And they're using social engineering to get people to give up that second factor. And then ultimately what they do is they create what's called a man-in-the-middle attack. So the hacker knows the the email address, which is our username, the password, and the second factor.
00:22:22
Speaker
They will put their own second factor on this person's account and sit on it. And once they've gotten everything they want from that one student, they'll use that student's account to compromise more. And so much of what we do in response to that is is understanding these scenarios, catching them catching them programmatically, catching them through awareness, letting students know this is what's going on, and really trying to protect the campus against that. But that's really how most, not just here on this campus, but across the world, most vulnerabilities start through social engineering, yeah typically through phishing and email.
00:22:56
Speaker
so just thinking about that brian i don't think people realize the magnitude of what damage this could cause a student an individual faculty of staff if somebody can get your information they can get into your your checking account savings accounts they can you know establish uh credit they can do so many things right i i always tell my son and my my family to lock their credit because, you know, that way nobody can create that. Because the the other challenging thing is there are so many companies that are getting hacked and so much information that, I mean, i wouldn't be surprised if everybody knows our social security by now and
00:23:40
Speaker
And in our addresses and and all these other things, what what can students or faculty and staff do to help really protect themselves or or just become aware on a regular basis so that they don't get into this you know predicament?
00:23:58
Speaker
Yeah, always joke. my My SSN and my birth date are like on that LifeLock commercial where it's on the side of a bus driving around. Yeah. I was a part of that UCLA breach for the medical center. Oh, my gosh. Every time I lift my my credit freeze, I get compromised or I get these little notifications that someone has done a credit check on me or something. Oh, my So whether it be for work-related purposes or in your personal life, as you mentioned, like you you told your kids and your and your family, the the first thing is being smart on this stuff, getting educated, looking at looking for and being suspicious of inquiries you receive, whether it be email, the random text message you receive, people de direct messaging you on social media platforms.
00:24:38
Speaker
As I mentioned, the the number one way people get into and hack accounts is through the social engineering, at least currently. right And it's only going to get worse with AI. I think they'll find more creative ways to socially engineer and try to try to crack through. It's always evolving. um Understanding what to look for.
00:24:53
Speaker
Be suspicious. Always have that suspicion that this can't be real. you know If you look back 10 years ago, was ah you know on a Nigerian prince died and left you all his money. Yeah. yeah Right. You're like, how the he heck, how in the world can this thing be successful? But it is right. Yeah.
00:25:07
Speaker
And so those evolve and they evolve today to, to what we're seeing now and in some, something the future is going to be similar to that. So always understand, always look to, to do it and then come up with complex passwords. I mean, the, the guidance on how to secure your account is, is also changing, right? We first conventional thought was five years ago, reset your password often.
00:25:26
Speaker
How often? So the conventional thought back then was every six months. That's completely changed. Research has shown that a password that has changed often is much more susceptible because you're putting it in a password file on your phone.
00:25:39
Speaker
You're writing it down, putting it on your screen because your password changed. So the conventional thought now is, and this is backed up by things like NIST, which is the National Institute for Security Standards or Technology Standards, is create a really complex, really long password and don't change it.
00:25:53
Speaker
And in fact, take it a step further. And this is something we're encouraging our students to do, is go passwordless. With things like Microsoft multi-factor authentication, there's an option. You could say, make this passwordless. And so when it comes to authenticating, it's always something you know and something you have.
00:26:10
Speaker
Well, you know you're using a password. And once you do it once, it defaults now to what you have. And you have a device in your pocket, right? So if you use Microsoft Authenticator, like on our campus, you can turn on passwordless and it'll say,
00:26:23
Speaker
you know a login attempt has been created it's got a little map it tells you where it's from so if you're in long beach and this thing is from new york you know it's not you right plus you have to number match you have to say what number is on the screen to log in and then you have to do unlock the app with some form of biometrics typically yeah you can use a pin too but usually people use their face id or their thumb going passwordless only further protects our students especially because they don't remember what their password is to even give it up How do you do that? Like, let's say your phone or your computer, how do you go passwordless?
00:26:58
Speaker
So this is part of our big marketing campaign for our technology help desk. you know We've really pushed into the socials. We've really partnered with student affairs, even our associate of students, student body president, trying to get the word out. We have a sticker campaign. And so we we have instructions on how our students and employees can do that.
00:27:17
Speaker
And we're really trying to promote it. We're even getting that student orientation registration as a big point. you know Right when students come to our campus, here's the right way of doing it, or here's the most secure way of doing it. Really, it's just through that knowledge. Plus, you know, we have Cybersecurity Awareness Month coming up, making sure that people understand these options exist there. So it's just really through word of mouth and formal communication and social media is a big part.
00:27:40
Speaker
When somebody gets in this predicament, what are they supposed to do? Like, what are the first initial steps when they know? I get all these, you know, it says I do DocuSign on different things. and And this, like this morning, I got one from this random email.
00:27:55
Speaker
and And I i was going to respond to it. then i looked at the And I did it so that I could see what email I was sending it to. And I was like, I have no idea. what this is. So i reported it to spam, but there's a lot of those things going around, but some people get tricked to thinking, oh yeah, it's, it's just something that I normally do and it's a routine I'm going to go through it.
00:28:14
Speaker
But then what happens when they get in that jam and and it's, it's compromised. Yeah, well, two things. Hopefully before you get compromised, especially for our campus community, we offer an alert so alert system.
00:28:26
Speaker
So if you receive an email that's borderline, I'm not sure, forward it to alert at csulb.edu, and we'll look at it. And right now it's it's my team, myself, and this is 24 by well,
00:28:39
Speaker
As long as we're awake, we're looking at it and responding, but it's it's seven days a week. I mean, I respond to these things on Saturdays and Sundays because ultimately we want to protect the person before they get compromised because cleaning that up for them and for us is a lot of work. Oh, yeah. So I'd rather respond on a Saturday saying, no, it's fishing or it's questionable.
00:28:58
Speaker
Don't do it. So that's the first thing. and And we're actually working to expand that service. We're trying to leverage AI as another way. And so we we maintain what's called a fishbowl. It's a website, csulb.edu slash fishing.
00:29:09
Speaker
And we're hoping to launch very soon ah utility on there. So when if you're in doubt, you can just simply copy and paste the contents the email, paste it into this website, and it'll tell you if it's fishing or not.
00:29:20
Speaker
So it's always on, always available. But let's say you do get compromised. So if it's part of your campus account, reach out to security, reach out to Division of IT Service Management. We'll walk you through the process or even our technology help desk.
00:29:33
Speaker
But generally what it does is we look at what was compromised. And this could be your personal life stuff, too. Like we've had students say, hey this happened to me at my Gmail account. What do I do? And it always really centers in on whether or not you gave them information to like banking, loan, your SSN, or financial aid, right? We've seen that in the past where people will well hack the account and go in and change the direct deposit, things of that nature.
00:29:58
Speaker
So it'll start a dialogue with our team and the security team to give you best guidance as someone who has given up that information and really work with you. And sometimes it results in a police report. Very rarely.
00:30:09
Speaker
Most of the times it's a simple reset your password, check your account, make sure there's no other device on there, yeah and you're good. And then one thing hackers always do is they'll write ah an email rule. If your email was compromised, that deletes all emails.
00:30:22
Speaker
So go in there, check your junk, clean up your account. It's a lot of work. on the On the further end of of the seriousness, it's a police report. On the most often end, it's just reset your password, clean your account, clean your mailbox, and learn from it.
00:30:34
Speaker
Yeah. And I also think it's important. I saw this alert on like the ring camera and it says, make sure you understand what devices you have active. And if you have this device, you've probably been compromised.
00:30:46
Speaker
Sure enough, I looked on it and it was, it was something I didn't recognize. So I deleted that, but then there was old, old phones that I had and, and cause I didn't go and clean it up. But You know, it it takes time and it takes effort, but you got to pay attention to it because if you don't, it can be very detrimental to your finances.
00:31:05
Speaker
Yeah, and I'm glad you brought that up because that's actually something we just implemented last week. We now alert um our campus community if another device is added to their account or a change was made. yeah And it could be completely legitimate. You could have gotten a new phone, right? But we're just alerting you.
00:31:20
Speaker
Hey, heads up, something happened on your account. Go take a look. yeah If it's legit, ignore this email. If it's not, call us, contact us. We'll help you through it. Yeah, so that's good.
00:31:31
Speaker
yep Okay, so you have October is Cybersecurity Awareness Month. What does that mean? What can people look forward to? How can we make the most of it? Really what it comes down to, as I've mentioned, is like knowledge is power when it comes to cybersecurity because it's always evolving.
00:31:47
Speaker
Even people who are savvy and think they know the latest, they probably don't. And so when it comes to Cybersecurity Month, we're right now developing our our platform, our curriculum. I'll probably give a presentation as part of this. But you know what to expect is you're going to see a series of communications come from Division of IT. We've been working with campus partners on what's important for them to hear. What what do we need to convey?
00:32:07
Speaker
you know Things like cybersecurity professional certificates, where they can get more information, alerting them to some of these more prevalent attack vectors, where they can gain their knowledge. So it's really just our way of introducing them to the portfolio of cybersecurity programming and knowledge that we offer and hopefully forging those long-term connections to our program. So it's not just a, it's just October, November, I'm good.
00:32:30
Speaker
No, it's come, come see what we have in October and let's maintain this dialogue throughout your, your academic life. And it's also going to benefit your your future life too, because what we teach isn't just applicable to the university environment. It's your life in general. Yeah. You know, i always like to kind of leave like a,
00:32:46
Speaker
tagline or a word that people can remember when they think of their IT.
Technology's Double-Edged Nature
00:32:50
Speaker
Maybe you have that one word that would say like, be alert or, hey, you want to lose your money or just pay attention because I think a lot of times, and I don't mean this to sound in a bad way, but technology doesn't sound as sexy to people, right? And they're they're kind of like oblivious because there's like, oh, if it's not on my Instagram, if it's not a picture, if it's not an image, I have to swipe.
00:33:12
Speaker
We're being trained in such a way that you know it's very robotic, right? you You look at things and you're like, swipe, swipe, or you know go and and look at whatever. and you and you just don't pay attention or you're not focused in the moment, it's it's not hard for somebody to get something by you, right? Not at all. And so I think, you know, maybe that's something because if if it's something simple that people can remember, it's like,
00:33:37
Speaker
Yeah. And when I see that, it's like, ah, I need to check my accounts or something. So maybe something to consider for that month, you know, to to to use as a theme maybe throughout the year so that people can be like, ah, oh, yeah yes, I got to check. I got check.
00:33:52
Speaker
That's great advice. Yeah, you know, technology is this great, powerful tool for good, but it could also really bite you if you if you if you succumb to any sort of security incident because they're not easily resolved in many cases, especially if they have your banking and they have your SSN, as we both mentioned in some of our incidents.
Brian's Career Journey
00:34:11
Speaker
Let's get into more about you. Okay, you're an alum. you You've been here so many years. You've kind of seen this campus grow. What keeps you motivated? I love what I do.
00:34:23
Speaker
yeah And I love being in IT. t And what I love about it most is it's always changing. yeah right So it's not the same thing. And it's easy to grow complacent. right So you mentioned I've been here a long time. I'll just i'll mention i've I started here in as an undergraduate student and got a job as a student assistant in the IT department working in telecommunications. and Graduated and became a staff member, got my MBA, became a manager.
00:34:46
Speaker
And, you know, so in the end, I've been here 30 years, 26 as a, as an employee. And I wouldn't have been here this long if I didn't love the university and like what I do and love what I do. So it's ah it's it's fun not only to be in IT t and see the evolution of IT, t but it's it's fun to be a member of this city.
00:35:06
Speaker
Yeah. Right? It's always exciting. There's always changes. There's always things that are happening, and it it keeps your mind going. ah You have to be agile. You know you mentioned budget earlier or business. Or you mentioned you know external forces that are hard, one of them is budget. yeah right So it makes it challenging to maintain and attract new IT t members and build your team because it's not about money. It's got to be you you have to love what you do to work at a university. You have to see the bigger picture that you know we have this role in educating tomorrow's workforce and and our future of our our country, really. So having that broader perspective of what I value in my job, I mean, that's that's that's it. That's what keeps me here.
00:35:44
Speaker
Are you a Long Beach native? I am born and born and raised. Wow. And you've seen you've seen the city, you've seen ah the university evolve and change. You know, what's what's ah what's shocking to you in a sense that, you know it's it gone by so fast and and what's exciting to you about what's to come?
00:36:01
Speaker
Yeah, it's ah it's hard to believe things have gone this fast. yeah And I think that's just a testament of enjoying what I do.
Pandemic as a Catalyst for Change
00:36:10
Speaker
It doesn't feel like it's taking forever. it's it's When you're having fun, time flies. and So I have certainly seen the university transform in many ways. I think the biggest way it really really took a pandemic to to force this was, you know prior to the pandemic, we were this brick-and-mortar institution. you know Basically, we taught kids on this campus. You'd go home.
00:36:30
Speaker
You work on this campus, you go home. And for years and years, we talked about telecommuting policies and whether you can do online remote learning. And no, we can't, or it's difficult, or I've got to get the unions involved and have people agree to it, collective bargaining. All of those roadblocks and challenges, in the blink of an eye, went away through emergency remote learning initiatives. Yeah.
00:36:50
Speaker
And I think that really, not only for universities, but for technology, that opened a new door. We got to the point where we knew and we were positioned very well through Smart Campus Initiatives to to really handle these students working and learning, you know, employees working remotely and students learning remotely.
00:37:06
Speaker
you know, how we do laptop models that inform those technology shifts and how we manage those. so So you're just as secure on your laptop at home as you are on campus. It kind of like broke apart, like how we we manage security and access. It's no longer just network. It's device, it's user and it's network. yeah So it gives us more options to to manage those things.
00:37:27
Speaker
um and And really the other thing that the pandemic really caused was this massive explosion or evolution of technology innovation. So now that we talk about digital divide, now that all these students and all these people have compute devices, real compute devices and a active devices,
00:37:42
Speaker
internet and and really strong technology adoption, including faculty, right? they've Everyone, faculty students are using Zoom, they're using all these online platforms, the learning management systems, Canvas. We're seeing companies meet those needs. So Gen AI is really a the escalation or the acceleration of generative artificial intelligence really is a product of really minimized in innovation cycles. So they're coming to market in weeks rather than years.
00:38:09
Speaker
And we're seeing these products being produced at no cost or
AI's Future Role in Education
00:38:12
Speaker
low cost. Wow. The future is only going to continue to so accelerate that. And the application, you know, some of it we know, like agentic AI, you know, where AI actually does things, not just responds to you. So you call a phone line, as an example, and say, what you know, I'm a business student. What do I need left? to What classes do I need? Yeah.
00:38:31
Speaker
And it'll read your account. Oh, you need marketing 301. Are any available this next semester? Yeah, I see three classes. This one has two Cs. do you want me to register you? Yeah, go ahead and register me. We're not there yet. There's a lot of integrations and security and all that involved. But that's just the next step. And then there are steps beyond that that will come. yeah And so we just need to be ready. And that's the kind of thing that keeps me going. That's awesome. Yeah, no, it's exciting. And I can i can see where... where It's exciting to you and and your You have a great team, I got to say. They're so responsive, easy to work with, and and so you know so collaborative and and willing.
00:39:08
Speaker
And then, obviously, VP Min is an amazing guy, too. What advice would you give to your 21-year-old student self, right? Maybe the next Brian ah you know that's coming through the pipeline of Cal State Long Beach. and you know what what What advice would you give?
00:39:24
Speaker
give I would give my 21-year-old self the same advice I give my 20-year-old daughter and my 17-year-old son is always learn. yeah Keep learning. yeah Keep growing. When you stop learning, when you stop exploring, you become stale. You become complacent, and you're never too old to stop.
00:39:42
Speaker
So keep learning. keep Keep your mind going, and you know have fun with it. That's awesome. So I always ask people like, so what inspired you in life to aspire to all the things that you have done? you mean, you've accomplished a lot in many different ways. So was it a was it a book? Was it a person?
00:40:05
Speaker
Was it a course? Was it ah event? Like what what is it that you can think about that has driven you to to be the person that you are today?
Personal Motivations and Education's Value
00:40:16
Speaker
I would say my grandparents. Okay. You know, they came here with nothing.
00:40:19
Speaker
And my grandma always said, they can't take an education from you. So get one. Yeah. And then I remember a graduate when undergrad. And she says, when are you doing in grad school? I'm like, I just finished. She's like, when are you going to grad school? That's awesome.
00:40:31
Speaker
And so, you know, I got an MBA. So you have to show some work experience. so I had to explain to her, got to work for two years. yeah She was on me. and she always instilled with me, you know, they're in life, people could take everything from you, but they can't take away your education. They cannot take away your knowledge.
00:40:47
Speaker
So my grandparents who came here with nothing were really my biggest influence. And not just to me, my brother as well. You know we were the first in our family to go to college and get a bachelor's degree. My mom went to some community college, but.
00:40:59
Speaker
and know We grew up dirt poor, and we knew that the only way forward to to move on is to better ourselves and give ourselves skills. And so my brother and I were the first to do that, and that is definitely something that advice I give my kids.
00:41:11
Speaker
Pursue your education. Don't take it for granted. So we've my wife and I have put a lot of stock in in making sure that our kids... have greater access to to education than we did.
00:41:22
Speaker
yeah And we're seeing it. I mean, my daughter's ah going to be a junior at Berkeley and my son is getting ready to go to school and, you know, he's, he's doing good. So that's awesome. Yeah. Well, you know what, your, your legacy continues, you know, cause now you instilled it in one generation and it
Podcast Conclusion and Gratitude
00:41:37
Speaker
will continue to go. So absolutely that's so awesome.
00:41:39
Speaker
Well, you know what, we've enjoyed this time with you. I, again, I want to thank you for all the work that you do here. for For just the way you think about the strategies to keep everybody safe, I will say on behalf of everybody, thank you, because you probably saved us a lot of headaches that we didn't even know about.
00:41:56
Speaker
And so and it also just for our division, we appreciate your collaboration because you work with us on so many different things. so easy to work with and so willing to work with us all the time. So we appreciate you for that. i appreciate the opportunity to come here. And i i definitely appreciate the opportunity, working with your team, working with yourself. It's it's great. I mean, what we do is about relationships yeah and we don't do things singularly, right? We're all this community to provide these services. And so working with you, working with your team has been very enjoyable and rewarding.
00:42:25
Speaker
Awesome. Thank you And so we thank our colleagues in iSpace Podcast Studios at the University Library for letting us record here. i want to thank my ah guy here, ah Jeff Bliss, for always coming up with ideas and and bringing the big great people to the podcast and really just putting it all together. So thanks, Jeff, for your work on that.
00:42:46
Speaker
And so, again, I'm Dan Montoya, Vice President for University Relations and Development. And, Brian, we'd like to close out each session with a GoBeach. One, two, three.
00:42:57
Speaker
Go, bitch. bitch.