Governor Pat McCory: Cyber Challenges in Government

Join us for an illuminating journey into the world of cybersecurity and governance as we sit down with former Governor Pat McCrory, the 74th Governor of North Carolina. In this captivating episode, Governor McCrory offers his invaluable leadership insights on the pressing issue of cybersecurity, particularly within the context of state and local government. #informationsecurity #government #governor #northcarolina #charlotte #asheville #greensboronc #raleigh

Discover how the decentralized nature of government at various levels is adapting to the ever-evolving digital landscape. Governor McCrory's extensive experience in public service provides a unique perspective on the challenges and opportunities in safeguarding our digital assets. Explore the real-world implications of cyber threats, with a particular focus on potential threats to the Department of Transportation (DOT). Gain a deeper understanding of how government agencies like DOT are addressing and mitigating these emerging challenges. We'll also delve into the recent Government Accountability Office (GAO) Report on Cyber, analyzing its key findings and recommendations. This report is a must-read for policymakers and cybersecurity professionals, and our disc

Episode Transcript

(00:05):
Today's businesses are on a vigilantwatch for threats in an ongoing cyber war.
It's time to get real world solutionsto protect and secure your valuable
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Welcome to cyber securityAmerica with Josh Nicholson.
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(00:26):
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Here's your host, Joshua Nicholson.
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(00:47):
https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshuanicholson/https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshuanicholson/
So I was looking for show ideas.
I really wanted to focus on cyber securitywithin government, not just federal
government, but look at state and localmunicipalities and how they're struggling
under the weight of these cyber attacks.
What is considered criticalfor government to function?
Where do we see trends that directlyimpact our daily lives from utilities,
management, tax collection, public safety,roads and infrastructure management?

(01:10):
All these functions are convergingusing technology and the disruption
of that by cyber criminals have hadan impact on our supply chains and
just key services for day to day life.
Now, in order to fully understand whatgovernment needs are in the realm of
technology risk management, I need toget the perspective of someone who's
worked in city and state governmentfrom some of the highest levels.

(01:32):
To get that real perspective on the issue,I turned to someone who has years of
experience running government as a mayor.
And as a governor within the state ofNorth Carolina, I thought who best to help
navigate this complicated topic and tryto understand what are the cybersecurity
implications and what we can do tohelp manage those threats in society.
Patrick Lloyd McCrory isan American politician.

(01:54):
He's a businessman and a radiohost who served as the 74th
governor of North Carolina.
From 2013 to 2017.
Now I was a member ofthe Republican party.
He previously served as the 53rdmayor of Charlotte from 1995 to 2009
while serving as Mayor of Charlotte.

(02:14):
McCrory served on the U.
S.
Homeland Security Advisory Council from2002 to 2006 under President George W.
Bush.
He was a Republican nominee forthe Governor of North Carolina
in 2008 general election
now, Mr.
McCrory was again the Republicannominee in 2012, the vittorial race.
They won 55 percent of the vote.
He became the -first mayor of Charlotteto win the state's highest office as

(02:37):
well as the first Republican to win thegovernorship of North Carolina since 1988.
Some of the other things of, Mr.
McCrory's background.
He's also hosted the McCrory, the PatMcCrory Show with Bo Thompson on WTWBT
1100 AM in Charlotte, North Carolina.
And in 2002, he had the president, GeorgeW Bush appointed him to the US Homeland

(03:00):
Security Advisory Council, along with MittRomney, Sonny Perdue, and Lee Hamilton.
Now, welcome to the show governor.
So glad to have you.
And did I miss anythingfrom your background, sir?
Currently just to let you know, I'ma co-chairman of a group called no
labels nationally, along with JoeLieberman and, , Ben Chavis, Dr.
Ben Chavis, and also the formergovernor of Maryland, Larry Hogan.

(03:24):
So that's where I'm spending myvolunteer time and awful lot.
And I'm doing a lot.
I've been doing a lot of meetthe press NBC analysts too.
And serve on a board or two.
So you're still staying pretty busy.
I see.
I'm trying to.
I think it's very important.
No matter what it'stime to use our wisdom.
Now, the lessons learned, especiallyin your area of expertise to

(03:47):
try to prevent some of themistakes we've made in the past.
And I think that's 1 of my majorgoals now is to teach young
leaders what to look out for.
Yeah, absolutely.
And I have so manyquestions for you right now.
Some of the things I wanted to start with.
I see just an annual number ofcyber events, according to the U.
S.
Federal agencies from 2006 to 2022, justin that fiscal year of 2022, the number of

(04:11):
cyber security events reported to federalagencies was over 30, 000 around a 5
percent decrease from the previous year.
When we look at a lot of stuff that'stargeting federal government or even
small sectors and so forth, it seemslike there's a lot of impersonation.
There's a lot of stuff that'shappening and disrupting of
small and local business.
But what's been your experience so faron how what are some of the things that

(04:33):
we need to be aware of when it comes tocyber security and government right now?
First of all, from a personal standpoint,we all have to be concerned when I was
governor of North Carolina, I was attackedpersonally where someone actually did
my income taxes from Florida and itwas Russia influenced and they finally
it took two years to track it down.
I had to work through the FBI and eversince I've had to have a special tax code.

(04:58):
But I literally while I was governor yeah.
Had someone else do my taxes.
I didn't know until I did my taxes.
I got note from the IRS saying,you've already got a refund.
Oh my.
And I found out it was a elderlycouple in Miami who did my taxes, and
it was coordinated by the Russians.
That woke me up.

(05:18):
But I'd long known thecybersecurity issue.
I really got into it.
First of all I was mayor in 1995and I was the first mayor in
Charlotte history to have a computeron their desk and have an email.
That's how new, oh really?
This is, I had to have my 10year old teach me how to use it.
First to have an email, and this iswhen we were phoning in trying to, do

(05:39):
some phone type connections with emails.
But later on, after 2001, when I goton Homeland Security I was appointed
as chairman of the subcommittee.
To oversee private sector communications.
And so much of that was cybersecuritybecause when there is a, either a man

(06:00):
made attack or a or a natural disasterit's the private sector that you have
to depend upon and their technologyto get the water systems back, to
get the electricity lines back.
And now of course, to get the celltowers back and you don't realize how new
that is actually, at least in my life.
Time is that cell towers is probablythe most important thing you have

(06:22):
to get back in a time of naturaldisaster or man made disaster.
But during my experience on homelandsecurity that we also learned
how vulnerable we are, how ourinfrastructure system, how our I.
T.
Systems are extremely vulnerable.
And they're not protectedregarding if something does happen.

(06:44):
We don't have a lot of we didn't havea lot of choices to get around it.
It literally shut down the whole system.
And we see this with infrastructureto with gas lines and electric lines
at the main lines in New York City or.
Cut off all of New YorkCity is gone there.
There's no alternative routes.
It's like the major highway goinginto a city having an accident

(07:06):
and there's no detour to go on.
That's it.
That's the only bridge in town.
Underneath that bridge.
Or a lot of I.
T.
Infrastructures which are extremelyvulnerable to the terrorist or
to war and things of that nature.
In fact, if you look at the crisis inthe Mideast right now going on or any,
even the war in Russia, Ukraine, thequestion might be what happens when

(07:30):
they start going after the satellites.
Once they're down, military connectivityand other types of connectivity are gone.
So that has not happenedyet to our knowledge.
But that could be something that futureleaders are going to have to think about.
Sadly, that's called space warfare,which now there's a separate department

(07:53):
that I think President Trump created.
So it gets from the most minor issuesof an individual elected official.
Of the ninth largest statehaving his information stolen
and used and coordinated by theRussians all the way to warfare.
And that's the way we have to thinkabout it and the ramifications of it.

(08:15):
No, absolutely.
And I think the just the topic of itreally came on really sudden and quick.
It wasn't like governmentreally could adapt to it.
It was all of a sudden we're the useof technology went from modems and
pagers to all of a sudden smartphonesand the technology and our controls
and just thinking how it can be usedand secured has just gone really quick.

(08:36):
In fact, absolutely.
And the dilemma is you had, you havepoliticians like me or every member of the
Senate or House or other governors, mainlythe governors and mayors whose Most of
them aptitude is pretty low in this area.
So they're dependent upon staff.
Then you have to figure out, do you havethe staff and government that compares.

(08:59):
equally to the talent that youhave in the private sector?
And the answer is probably no, becauseyou're not paying the wages that the
private sector is paying IT people.
And the other issue might beyou even have transition issues
change in administrations in theWhite House or a governor's office
when all these new people come.

(09:20):
One thing that's happened at theWhite House that has happened in
many state governments is all thelaptops that people add the 28 year
olds, the 25 year olds that had jobs,they just walk out with their I.
D.
S.
And their pass codes.
And the oversight is extremely limited.
And believe me, the people who wantto get into the system know how latch

(09:43):
some of the government systems are.
Especially with temporary workersbased on two or four year terms.
No, yeah, it makes sense.
I also envisioned that when I lookat the GAO reports and I look at
the Verizon breach reports, a lotof it is help desk manipulation.
It's still impersonation of highlycredentialed individuals like it

(10:06):
managers that can reset passwordsand get in the systems and so forth.
And I just thought that Maybethat's how government works.
It's Sally and accounting, or it'sthis over if you knew the right people.
I'm sure as mayor or governor,you knew who to pick up the
phone and who to talk to.
In fact, when I was governor, I saw ITand the systems extremely disjointed.

(10:26):
Every department had their own ITand there was no tie in whatsoever.
So one of my first acts as governoris I made my IT person centralized.
Reporting directly to meand a member of my cabinet.
Now, this upset some of my, theDepartment of Transportation or
the Health and Human Services oreven the personnel department go.

(10:49):
No, we like our own system.
I want an I.
T.
person report to me becausethen I have more control over.
But the dilemma is.
With those central control and a majorstate government like North Carolina,
which again is the ninth largest statein the United States, the opportunity to
get into our system as we decentralizeduring all these years, since the 80s,

(11:13):
when all this started being developed.
was very open to potential long termproblems and short term problems.
So that's the first thingI did was make an I.
T.
Person is a member of my cabinet andcame to every one of my cabinet needs
every Tuesday morning and It was tough,because the Department of Transportation,

(11:37):
you go, what's the big deal withthe Department of Transportation?
There's a big deal because one of thethings that some of the foreign companies
or foreign governments are doing, they'retrying to get into the state DOTs.
Into their system.
You may ask why would china or russiaor whoever want to get into a dot?
Site well china owns a lot of constructioncompanies and a lot of construction

(12:02):
companies put in bids for multi 100million, a billion dollar road projects
and their bid on wouldn't it be nice toknow what those bids were competitive?
These are the stuff I had to learnas governor and going, wait a minute,

(12:22):
I have to protect D O T as much as Ihave to protect a department of health
and human services, which is a lotof personnel information on people's.
across the state on their health, whichis extremely important data to a lot
of people who want to steal that datafor the sake of their own business.

(12:43):
And you also have a lot of vendorsand lobbyists and who are trying to
get into the government data for theirclients and go, Hey, if we get into
that data that the government owns.
We could use that for the private sector,and I'm not even getting to election
data, which has been controversial.

(13:03):
So this is where an IT person on my mycabinet was extremely important to me.
In fact, I remember in my about fourthmonth in office, he came in and said
governor, we've got to take, we got todo something that you might not want.
And I said, what's that?
And he said, we're going to do atest on our entire system to see.

(13:25):
How many people are infiltrating oursystem because it hasn't been done
for four years and you're not going tolike the results or we can do nothing
and just pretend it's not happening.
I remember sitting in the governor'soffice going, we have no choice but to
do it, but it's going to be embarrassingpolitically if it comes out that all
that information during my watch,because whoever's in office will be

(13:48):
blamed for the breaches that have maybebeen occurring for years in my state.
They become political decisionsand that's what gets so difficult
political decisions when you thinkjust from a cyber security perspective.
It's just a technology decision.
It's just to deploy technology in this wayand manage it in this manner and seeing
that centralized approach rather than.

(14:11):
To hear the different departmentssegmented like that, you understand why
a technologist or a cyber security personhas to help meld that together and have
a consolidated approach towards it.
But I guess that leads into1 of my other questions.
I see where says they had over 4000recommendations to just different
agencies on cyber security short fallings.
And there's only 880 of themhave not been fully implemented.

(14:34):
So what is over and over again.
I see where there's.
Recommendations for changesin vulnerabilities within
state and local governments.
But sometimes it seems difficult thatthey're making any improvement in it.
Is it because of the disjointednature that you just talked about and
all the dimensions to the problem?
Or is it bigger than that?
It's probably, it's many reasons.

(14:54):
One is command and control.
Decentralized some of it, by the wayyou're buying, I found we are buying
software, for example, that had notbeen used in 5 to 10 years, but the
vendor kept saying, hey, resign this.
And so when I would sign it, thevendor has a good relationship.
I'm not saying it was corrupt.

(15:16):
I'm just saying the vendor probablyknew they weren't using it anymore.
The person signing it probably went,Oh, it's just another sheet of paper.
We'll sign off on thatmillion dollar contract.
And I stopped a lot of thoseduring my first year as governor.
But I'll tell you another dilemmais turnover in state government
and it, because as the way peoplein it get promoted is the move.

(15:38):
To another company or toanother organization, that's
the best way to make more money.
And as the limited number of it peoplethat were available in the private sector
they were stealing from the public sector.
Yeah.
So you might've had a person on my teamway down working on a recommendation.
And like you maybe have now,that person suddenly leaves.

(16:03):
And it can be put off on the sideuntil they hire someone new and has to
be retrained and next thing you couldhave a year gap right there between the
recruitment and hiring and training whenthat person left with a two week notice.
And does it make sense?
Government's job is to rungovernment banks to run banks.

(16:25):
Does it make sense to do manageservices and have your security
run by other security companiesand say, okay, I'm never going to
hire this talent within government.
Do I have a bucket of hoursin which I can consult?
That kind of talent todo that kind of stuff.
Do you see that as maybea method moving forward?
I did some contracting now.
The only danger is you've got tomanage, you've got to have the

(16:45):
qualified people to contract, tomanage the contract itself, right?
You've got to make sure,is it a good contract?
Is it a fair contract?
Is it a contract in which yourinformation is confidential to
make sure that contractor doesn'trelease any information with other
potential conflicts of interest?
You've got to make sure, howdo you measure whether that

(17:07):
contract's doing a good job or not?
I know I had, we had vendors constantlyselling us even issues of security.
But you've got to make sure then youhave a person who at the end of that
contract or mid waypoints, six months ora year, are they really getting results?
And you even have peoplewho are qualified to measure

(17:28):
whether they're getting results.
It's a very difficult situation,especially when you have high turnover
or you have people who aren't reallyqualified in the contract area.
They might be qualified in IT, but they'renot qualified in reviewing contracts.
Those are tough skills to find.

(17:50):
They definitely are.
It's like that trusted advisor.
I can imagine I've been in cybersecurity for 24 years, right?
So I do it largest companies in theworld, but it would be nice to be
a reservist, so to speak, and workfor the city or for the state going.
You know what?
I live in this city.
I live in this state.
I'm willing to do some hours pro bonohere to help drive some things forward.

(18:12):
It'd be interesting tobe able to have that.
We have a lot of guys that wouldlike to volunteer that time.
I tell you what I did was mytwo cabinet secretaries, I,
that both lasted two years.
I had one, two years,then he got burned out.
I was paying him.
He was semi-retired in the area inthe early fifties, and I approached
him, I said, listen, I need your, Ineed you for public service and I can

(18:35):
pay you $130,000 a year to lead allit for the state of North Carolina.
I'm talking about a, a state with a $22billion budget and I'm paying $131,000.
Wow.
Where in the privatesector, what would that be?
Paying?
Yeah, it'd be closer to two. Depends on the user experience.

(18:57):
Yeah.
But.
You have to ask for people to sacrificeand hey, can you give me two years?
It'll be a great experience.
You're going to have fun.
You're going to get to change the worldand you have to peel for other reasons.
And so that's what I did.
I got two outstanding people.
In fact, I just, sadly, I had to go toa funeral day and I sat next next to,

(19:18):
in the pew to one of my old IT guys whoI hadn't seen in seven years and he's
working for the university system now, IT.
There you go.
Yeah, it's in the university system.
So I have one who's a seniorat UNC Charlotte mechanical
engineering ROTC program.
So we'll be in air force.
They've got a good pro UNC engineeringschools got really good school.

(19:40):
They do.
And you can tell it's good when youhave a son who's straight A's honors,
and then gets put into a few difficultclass and is really struggling.
I love to see struggle that man.
It was pushing, and he's I don't know,dad, maybe I get in over my head.
But that push that you're not gettingstraight A's right off the bat.
I think that was a great there aresome schools that give everyone an A

(20:03):
just to inflate the grade and GPA tohelp them with the private sector.
But most people recruiting know whoinflates the grades and who doesn't.
I'm an old, I'm an old recruiter forDuke Power Company in my thirties.
So we knew what schools inflated thegrades and what schools were accurate.
I can tell you the tutoringbill has proven that they grade
accurately at UNC Charlotte.

(20:24):
'cause we've had to use several.
Good to hear.
I do see where they're buildingcybersecurity programs now.
So UNC Charlotte's got one.
North Carolina state's got one.
Where they're trying to bring upthe skill sets of the local talent.
I have two nephews, for instanceare going that cybersecurity route.
And in many ways, it's difficult.
It's difficult to get studentloans when you don't have credit

(20:46):
and you don't have a cosigner.
Yeah.
It's not just the program, but howdo you live and how do you get living
expenses while you go through theprogram to come out as a cybersecurity?
This is where as governor, I attemptedto do this, but boy, it's hard to do.
We give all these scholarships away,but we treat them all equally and when,
in fact, we ought to give scholarshipsbased upon the market need and one of

(21:08):
the major market needs is cyber security.
And by the way, other engineeringfields, too, and and the dilemma
is due to politics is A lot ofthe scholarships being given
aren't related to market demand.
I related to teaching right now.
We pay all teachers the same in K through12, even though the market demand for

(21:31):
someone in it or science or math is muchhigher and much more difficult to get.
But if you want to, you have to pay themthe same as the physical ed teacher.
And I tried to change that.
The teaching professiongoes, that's not fair.
So therefore we have a majorshortage in K through 12 schools

(21:52):
of people with technical needs.
And even our community colleges have ashortage because the private sector is
stealing from our community colleges too.
Oh, I know.
So I there's a couple of them I deal withI've consulted with here locally, some of
the community colleges and just keepinga good adjunct professor crew that has
cybersecurity backgrounds and so forth.

(22:14):
I know from all the expertsthat I deal with every day is
that we're so busy and work.
The idea of being able to teachin the evenings is difficult.
It's hard.
And going to a community college,getting that program, I think they
would have a lot of benefits towards it.
I think personally, we ought to probablyfocus in our colleges and universities and
our high schools much more on this issue.

(22:37):
First of all, because there's a need and2nd, this is where kids can make money and
pay back their loans as opposed to othermajors that they're taking where there's.
No jobs, and they're going to bewaiting tables and getting in debt.
Sadly, our universities, many havenot adjusted to the market demands of
our country and to the private sector.

(22:57):
And we need to treat some of thesedegrees where we have incredible needs
in this area as we do a basketballneed for a center or a guard.
And you're, you have to gorecruit them and pay for it.
And you'll get your return and theprivate sectors doing this pretty well.
The government sector just doesn't havethe infrastructure in place to do this.

(23:20):
And then once we get them again,the turnover some of the private
sectors got recruiters have gottensmart and go, Hey, we'll let.
This young guy developed orwoman developed in state of North
Carolina job or a city of Charlottejob, and then we'll steal them.
Yeah.
So we got a lot of turnoverat this point in time.
When I think some of the skills thatconcentrate to is that I think there's

(23:43):
a misrepresentation of cybersecurity.
So there is this thinking thatyou have to have some advanced
mathematical understanding.
You have to have calculus three trainingand all when you really don't, there's
several different dimensions to it.
Some of them have to do with GRC,which governance risk and compliance.
It's all right.
It's assessments.
It has a great perspective andit's needed in cyber security.

(24:03):
It's not something like as an engineermyself, I would want to do, but there is
other aspects of people who do want to do.
It's checklist based and so forth.
By the way, in addition to that, thereare major legal issues regarding this.
So usually if you have a issue whereyou have been infiltrated by another

(24:24):
entity, and the most dangerous arethe foreign entities you also have to
immediately get to your legal people.
And you gotta find legal people whounderstand this from a technical and legal
people, which is very hard to do too.
Yeah.
And because you've got a, you'vegot issues of chain of command at
what point in time, if you have beeninfiltrated, do you have to notify the

(24:47):
customers whose data has been taken ornotify the public or the stockholders?
This was an issue I had with HomelandSecurity at what point in time, because
at some of the private sector peopleI dealt with who had been data taken.
They had to go, say a low levelmanager found out you have

(25:09):
a data penetration, right?
Someone's taken, right?
Then they try to figure it outthemselves for a little bit, right?
Maybe.
24 hours.
They go, Oh, my God, I'm gonnatry to figure this out myself.
Now I better tell my supervisor.
The supervisor is going,Now I got to tell my VP.
But if I tell my VP, am I risking my job?

(25:30):
Because the VP is going to go,What the hell did you just do?
Why did this happen on your watch?
So he's going to try to figureit out before they tell the VP.
Then you tell the VP and the VP isthinking the same thing to the president.
Or to the governor and then thegovernor or the president or CEO
of the company is going, whendo I tell my board of directors?

(25:52):
And the governor is going,when do I tell the media?
Because who's the media going to blame?
They're going to blame whoever told them.
And the governor's of course,politically going to go we found out
we did the right thing by finding out.
Media won't care about that.
They're not going toblame your predecessor.
Like blame management.

(26:13):
Everybody's protecting themselves.
But it's called CYA at alllevels of authorization.
And then by the way, you might callthe vendor or the consultant that
you hired and was supposed to becontracting to cover this, do this.
And then the contractor isgoing to go wasn't our fault.
We communicated this.
It's human dynamics and while all thisinternal, it might be 24 hours, it

(26:37):
might be two weeks, it might be threeweeks or a month before it gets out,
the people who are penetrating yoursystem are taking advantage of it.
So those are political, internal politicalthings, whether you're in the private
sector or in a political field likeI've been, that you have to review.
And of course in a public tradedcompany, you're worried about the

(27:00):
stockholders, is your stock going to die?
If you all of a sudden announcethat this has been penetrated and
your IT people are going, wait aminute, give me another 24 hours.
I will fix it.
So we can say we'repenetrated, but it's fixed.
They give them another 24 hours.
The CEO is going, is it fixed?
No, give me another 24.

(27:21):
And then they're on the line bygoing, their board's going to go,
why did you let us know earlier?
It's all logical.
Part of that is I complimentpeople into behavior changes.
For instance, when I'm dealing withchief information security officers
or CEOs and they're wanting reportsand the incident just happened 30
minutes ago, we don't have a report.

(27:42):
We're in the middle of the fire.
We're still trying to figureout what which ways up, but
they're always wanting to report.
What's the status report?
Because part of it is not thatthey don't trust you is that
they just want to contribute.
If you need my assistance, you need me to.
Get obstacles out of the way.
And so what I would do when I got tothe point where we could give that
initial briefing, this is what'shappening in the cyber incident.

(28:03):
I think they're also worried about.
Do I need to tell someone else?
Now?
You told him or her.
Okay.
I've gotten this information.
How long do I hold on to it?
Or do I need to communicate itto my superior or to other peers?
In other departments, which is partof the incident response plan, right?
And so they're going, at whatpoint in time do I need to.

(28:28):
And there's no perfect answerespecially as you're trying to fix it.
There have been I remember whengovernor of South Carolina Nikki
Haley, when she just got intooffice, a lot of health information
had been released on her fault, butthere was about a week long story.
You look what they.
Nikki Haley's administration did,and of course she's a peer, didn't

(28:52):
probably even know it existed.
I even had instances as governorwhere I had a legislature, some
vendor or a lobbyist got to alegislature and they wanted to buy
data from the state of North Carolina.
And they thought, that sounds good.
It's a way to make money.
Like tax?
Huh?

(29:12):
Like tax data?
Or what kind of datawere they looking for?
If I recall, it might'vebeen healthcare data.
Interesting.
And it's the way the legislatorsis thinking like this going.
Oh, this is a way we can makemoney and help our deficit.
It's a great idea.
And plus this.
This person is a strong supporter of mine.

(29:33):
They employ a lot of people.
Let's help them out.
And thank God we caught it in the bill,in a huge budget bill, this little
line in there about selling data andit would have been a catastrophe.
How hard is it to catch thosekinds of things where you have
extremely hard come through andyeah, I don't know what that is.
It's a hundred grand that wentout the door for something.

(29:54):
I'm not sure what that is.
It's extremely hard.
Especially when there are changes beingmade up and marked up in the last minute.
Now, hopefully it'snot happening too well.
You got IT people who arewatching out for that.
And in my case, we had an IT person inmy governmental affairs who found it.
And cut it off at the, before the vote.

(30:16):
And I'm not saying that guywas doing anything wrong.
It was just his narrow thinking ofprivatization and things of this nature.
It was a policy maker who wasgetting actively involved in the
operation of a state government.
You have these issues and somany of the systems that we buy.

(30:37):
And in Homeland Security now, since even2001, when we had the attack, think of all
the systems that have been bought in everycity and county and all the op centers
that have been, every city New York beingthe first built their op center on the
8th floor of the World Trade Center.
That was the Emergency OperationsCenter that I went to go see.

(30:59):
A month before July, early July of2001, Giuliani took me to a tour of
this high tech op center with a lotof data, a lot of cameras, a lot of
video that we didn't used to have,that's probably be used by terrorists.

(31:22):
And I remember going, Hey, we need this inCharlotte and we built one in Charlotte.
Now.
Two months later that ended up not beinga very good spot for the brand new public
safety coordination center to be built.
I think it was the eighth floorone of the world trade buildings.

(31:42):
Interesting.
To be a part of that.
I had something similar whenI was in the Marine Corps.
I was stationed.
I went to the South Korea.
So I was on an operation there on theDMZ and I got army colonel brings us
into this bunker and we get to seethe defense of the Korean Peninsula.
And here's the live radar ofNorth Korea versus South and.
I'm telling you, it's not propaganda.

(32:03):
There is nothing happening in North.
There, there is no radar signatures dark.
There's no hits.
South Korea is lit up like aChristmas tree and North is dead.
You don't even see a single plane.
It's not propaganda that really exists.
And I thought it was interesting justseeing how that set up, how that kind
of war bridge was and and so forth.
And one of the things I think ofgovernment all the time is that,

(32:27):
where is that kind of war bridge?
Did you have that as governor whereyou're, you have the different
utilities that are calling in ifthere is a cyber security incident?
There's some kind ofcentralized reporting mechanism.
And I think to your point is the.
Maybe the key is having the incidentresponse plan where you're notifying
people in the right order at theright time because like you're saying,
it just seems to get out of hand.

(32:48):
If you notified too quickly, too fast,it just politically gets taken over
and it's no longer a technical issue.
It's more of a political one after that.
Is that what you're saying?
And then there's an issue.
Do you notify the White House first?
Or do you notify governor?
Or do you notify a mayor,depending upon where it goes?
Do you notify they're alllevels of government and we're,

(33:10):
we're a confederation in a way.
And then the same thing occurs wherethe White House or the executive branch
might find out there's a nationalbreach and who do they call first?
Do they call their senator?
Do they call their congressman?
Do they call the governor?
Do they call the mayor?
Say the breach happened in Charlotte.

(33:31):
So who's the Biden White House call?
The mayor first?
The governor of the two senators,they tried to do it all at once.
And how long?
How?
What's the scope of the people wenotify if you want to keep it secret?
Or do you just notify the chiefs ofpolice and keep it within the public
safety realm or the head of the S.B.I.

(33:53):
or f.B.I.
So there are issues of Is itconfidential or is it not confidential?
And if it's confidential, they'llprobably go to law enforcement first,
not even to the governors, becausethe word will get out very quickly.
So during as I heard, I got confidentialreports as both the mayor and the governor

(34:17):
on potential terrorist activities.
And the question is, what doyou do with that information?
Now, I also might say that there's a lotof Intel out there on terrorist activity.
And I remember me and other governorswould get a get an update from the FBI.
We'd all go in a room and theyclose all the shutters and

(34:39):
take our phones and we'd go.
This is.
This is going to be pretty cool.
We're going to hear some neat stuffand a lot of it's cyber security
stuff about what they're hearing.
And but so they give you along introduction about how
this must be kept confidential.
This is extremely important.
They give like a 20 minuteintro and we're all just going.

(35:01):
We're about to learn something.
And then what you learn iswhat you just heard on CNN.
It's already out and so it'snot like the old TV show 24 but.
Information is power.
And that's why peopleare trying to steal it.

(35:23):
Yeah, I have these four guys thatwork for me and they're in the
come from the intelligence agency.
So I have three, four, five people NSA.
The company I work for is calledDeep Seas and we have 160 employees.
23 percent of us are veterans.
So there is a mission focuswhen we use cybersecurity.
We don't go to sleep while there'sstill an incident that's happening.

(35:44):
And I think there's a lot of focuson trying to drive change within
organizations, how to do things, what'sbest for our customers how to focus on it.
What they were telling me fromtheir NSA background experience
is that we took a real hit whenthe whole Snowden breach occurred.
We didn't have the technologicaladvantage when it came to our adversary,
especially when it had China and Russia.

(36:06):
And because of that, that knockedus back so you could always debate
what was that the right way to do howwhen he disclosed that what he did.
But I can tell you thatthe impact was tremendous.
I know to the NSA, their abilityfor implants, how they were
collecting information and so forth.
Now, it seems to be a much moredangerous world is what we're
hearing is more field and most ofthe incidents I'm dealing with.

(36:30):
Or Chinese Russian base.
They're there.
A lot of them are APT.
They're advanced threat actors.
So they have resources thatpeople this isn't just a kid
that goes to the dark web.
They have infrastructure.
They have what's called TTPs(tactics, techniques and procedures).
They've repeated it.
There's orchestration.
So for instance, I wouldsteal your credentials.

(36:52):
I would send out a phishing emailto steal your credential, and I'm
not gonna do anything with it.
I'm gonna sell it to an IABor Initial Access Broker.
So I send it to the eBay of credentialsand I just sell it off to somebody else.
I don't even attempt to do it.
So there's an entire economybehind it that's on the dark web.
And, but I could tell you latelywe see a lot of take downs by

(37:14):
the FBI the FBI has really.
Going across and takingsome serious actors down.
You can see a few of them,like Conti Ransomware Group was
out of the the Baltic nations.
So they had half Russian, halfUkrainian people that were in
this criminal organization.
And then when the war had hit,there was almost like a , a civil
war occurred within that group.
They were making something like 30million a month on their ransomware.

(37:37):
And because what happens is nowI don't have to steal your data
and then try to go sell it.
I just lock and ransom your PCand then I force you to buy to pay
me in order to have it unlocked.
And man, by the way, the question isif you're, if ransom is being sought,
the other issue, the leaders of whetherthe, whether it's a Governor or Mayor or

(38:00):
a CEO is, do I tell anyone about this?
Think about that decision right there.
Do I keep this a secret?
And just go at the cost of doing business.
We'll put it in the budget somewhere,or do I let it publicly known,
which could be a, again, you'retalking about people's jobs.

(38:20):
Someone's going to belooking to blame somebody.
And those are tough decisions to make.
So some of those things you'redealing with, one of the biggest
issues is communications.
Who do we tell?
Nine 11, you go back to nine 11, some ofthe breakdowns were all in communications.
We had some of the information.

(38:41):
Now, this was cyberware at the time,but, it's the matter of who you share
it with and there's a, there's pros andcons to sharing information because you
don't know if it's complete information.
I'll tell you the other thing I'mworried about and I'd love your feedback
is now that everyone's going homeand doing work at home with laptops.

(39:01):
Yeah, there's no main computer.
Everyone's going in the cloud in bothgovernment and in the private sector.
I have to assume the controls areeven more vulnerable in this business
because right now, a lot of peoplein both government and the private
sector are doing their work at home.
Yeah.
And that means your laptop is, vulnerable.

(39:23):
And I imagine the bad guys knowthis very well where they did
though when the pandemic first hitthere was mad chaos on that side.
So what will happen is theattack surface space has opened
up for government employed foreveryone who's working at home.
That bring your own device typemethodology that says, bring your laptop.

(39:43):
You can connect to the cloud servicesand I don't have to worry about.
Updating it, patching it and payingfor the license is hugely backfired
when the pandemic shut everybody down,nobody had remote access capabilities
at that scale for their entire team.
And yes, we had security threats where wehad people doing administrative work from
their home PC that never had antivirus.

(40:05):
It was connected toanother wireless network.
So yes, that whole moveto remote management.
Caused massive problems and people had toimplement different proxy based systems,
like for instance, you can head home, goto Google and look up anything you want.
Anything that's may deemed inappropriate.
Let's say hacking tools.
You want to go look atthe latest hacking tool.
You can do that at home,download it, try it and so forth.

(40:28):
We don't want that on corporate machines.
We don't want you just to be able to godownload Kind of blur the line between
a personal PC and a corporate devicewhen you're using that bring your own.
Now, let me preference thatwhen you're doing bring your
own mobile device for things.
It's a little bit different becausewe've had technology that allows
us to keep data in apps and I don'thave to wipe your entire phone.

(40:49):
If you leave the company,I just wipe that 1 app.
And so we have the best of both worlds.
You don't get my data and I don'thave to wipe your personal phone.
But doing with desktopsis just much different.
And plus the old days used to firesomebody and you just took their
desktop away and they left the office.
Now you got to go track down theirstuff at home and you think you get

(41:12):
it, and yeah, I can't imagine thedifficulty now this laptop and the
cloud have changed the world since I've.
Been in office and I mean everything washard drive and yeah, and And you think
about this in the I used to work for DukePower- company Yeah, and I just noticed
I was in downtown Charlotte the other dayand I saw their old hard drive building

(41:34):
one of those old solid looks like agerman bunker in normandy being torn down.
Oh, really?
Yeah, it's gone so I don't know wherethey keep the days, they either contract
out their data or it's The world haschanged, but you're talking about

(41:55):
the power grid, the telephone grid,grids which control our water systems.
Grids control our military systemsgrids that control police information,
criminal justice information,medical information, many more lists.
We're extremely vulnerable.

(42:16):
And it's beyond me.
It's beyond my pay grade onhow how we're going to do it.
And I'll just say from a governmentstandpoint, the problem is the Are you
getting the level of people that you need?
Do you have the trainingto keep people up to date?
Do you have the security in place?
Do you have the political will to do it?

(42:37):
You have legislators which budgetmoney toward that, especially if
you're in tough financial times.
We'll hold off on that for another year.
We're having other issues thatwe've gotta deal with that are much
more important to our constituency.
And I'll tell you what I noticedthat helps us so much in the
world is procurement, forinstance is part is ensuring.
When you do invoke third parties, thereis a risk management aspect to this.

(43:02):
They do meet certaincybersecurity controls.
So I think there's a lot to do withprocurement, but one of the biggest
problems I have is defending networksthat are old and they had mergers
or acquisitions, or they neverkept up with the life cycle of it.
You have old windows seven machinesthat have never been patched and.
Somehow we're supposed to magicallyprotect these things, but the computing

(43:24):
life cycle that they're supposed to falland get decommissioned after five years,
the application rolls away and nobodylives where they essentially buy computers
and applications and think they'reself healing and they just keep up with
themselves and nobody has to do anything.
But that technical debt iswhat gets popped all the time
in most of our intrusions.
It's not the newer desktops that rolledout with the new hardening guidelines.

(43:49):
It's not any of that.
It's all the older stuff.
And then it's the credentials for thedomain admins, the people that have
the keys to the kingdom, when they'resurfing internet using those kings of
the kingdom, and they get loose andattacker gets them, they impersonate
them and take over the entire network.
So we see a lot of things is justbasic, get rid of older equipment,
have a life cycle to do that.

(44:10):
And then, like you're saying,having the trained people.
And the will to put thatout in a consolidated focus.
If you're distributed and you have 1department of the government is doing 1
thing, have their own one, have the other.
It's nearly impossible tocoordinate a cyber approach to that.
And I'll let me tell you, befrank about politics procurement.
You got to make sure youkeep the politics out of it.

(44:30):
You keep the rules.
consistent and fair.
But the people who put in bids alsocontribute to politicians and the
political parties and super PACs
now, I'm just reading thething about FTX right now.
And they were giving money out like candy.
A month before they went undertrying to get political protection.

(44:54):
If FTX, that's obvious dollars.
That's what they werespending right at the end.
Oh, they were given money tocampaigns and a super PACs.
I'm talking in the tens of millionsof dollars they gave to Schumer.
They gave them McConnell.
They gave to conservative super PACs.
They gave the liberal super PACs.
And I guarantee they gave to everyperson on banking and finance committees
and both the Senate and the House.

(45:17):
And you'd like to say that didn'thave any influence, but you add
Congressman and from both Republicansand Democrats write letters trying
to stop FTX from being looked into.
Of course, you had celebrities involved,but you just translate that into.
That's a money thing, which was controlledby, what type of cybersecurity do

(45:41):
they have controlling people's money.
But there was a lot of money going toWashington, DC and to the political
system, which probably delayed theinevitable of this guy getting caught.
You're seeing some of thiscome out of the trial.
So procurement and oversight, you'vegot to make sure is protected from the

(46:02):
political system, but you also have toprotect it from the bureaucracy that
sometimes get lazy and don't look for newthings because they're not rewarded in
the government bureaucracy for change.
I noticed that.
Yeah, it's not noticed becausethere's no revenue incentive, right?
Or there's none.
None.
They want to get throughtheir pension, man.

(46:24):
They want to get their 20 or 30years in and it's human nature.
I'm not criticizing them asin so change is just making my
last five years more difficult.
I saw my legacy.
Like I'm going to leave a legacy bychanging X, Y, and Z why I'm here.
So that's what's the incentive.
You don't get bonuses.
The reward in government workis pensions, and there are no

(46:47):
pensions in the private sector.
There are still pensions inthe public sector, so you get
pensions for surviving in time.
So how's that interact with yourfield, which changes every single day?
It doesn't.
Yeah, none of us work for pensions.
None of us think about pensions.
Think of the military.

(47:07):
Military's pension too.
You got to get your 20 years in alease, then you get your pension.
And in police, it's 25 years,although in some cities that are
going broke with pension programs,so they're all underfunded.
We've got to make sure yourbusiness were motivating people

(47:27):
to watch out for these things.
And in government, there's notas much incentive to do that.
The pay structure is not set that way.
So it's interesting how sofor the government of 2024 and
beyond, where do you think?
government needs to move to.
I know cloud services, you havedifferent technology platforms, but

(47:47):
is there just a different way thatgovernment should look at how do
you do technology and cybersecurity?
It's almost, yeah first you're goingto have to adjust the pay scale.
You're going to have tostart paying private sector.
The dilemma is the othergovernment workers will tell the
legislature, that's not fair.
If you raise their pay,I need my pay raised.
Then you have taxes that will bankrupt.

(48:08):
So you've got to get in amore market based bonus.
related area, especiallythese technology fields.
And then you've got to come up witha system where you can get trusted
vendors, but not vendors that have aclear monopoly and become so powerful
that you can never change them.
Because once they're hired, theystart giving political donations to

(48:29):
again, legal political donations,but they become very powerful.
To keep their contracts and I hateto say it, but people with government
contracts tend to give political donationsat the city, state and federal level,
especially to the committees in charge.
I'm not saying that's their incentive.

(48:50):
I'm just saying it's there isprobably a little motivation there.
And I'm talking about legaldonations and illegal stuff.
You have to watch out forto direct cash payments.
Hell, we just had a senator.
He was indicted for takingpayments from Egypt.
Menendez gold Menendez.
So there's so much money in thesecontracts and whenever there's a

(49:14):
lot of money to something, there'sgoing to be someone stupid enough
to tempt the decision makers andthere'll be some of those decision
makers tempted enough to take it.
And that in the private sector too.
Corruption.
And the Chinese government and theRussian governments, you're all of a
sudden seeing a lot of arrests beingmade of sailors or on ships that might

(49:35):
get arrested of that sailor showing whatthat system is on a ship or something.
And what's even more ironic, it'slittle, it's not that much money, but
it's a lot of money to that sailor.
For the people paying their money,they're probably shocked at how
little it takes to find out thatinformation and China is good at it.

(49:56):
So is Russia and it's a no go for us.
Executives too.
So especially people like myselfused to have security clearances.
We don't go to China anymore.
And mostly, when I was with anotherbank for a while, We would send
executives to China and we'd give thema burner laptop and then we'd trash
it and literally destroy the laptop.
When we arrested that soldier recently,he was what 23 years old and he had

(50:18):
access to all this information at 23.
Oh, you mean the National GuardYeah, 22, 23 and our adversaries
can see those weaknesses.
They're very smart.
Yeah, these are all issues thatwe all have to be worried about.
And and we have to have politicianswho are courageous enough to ask

(50:42):
these questions, both in privateand in public, and put people on
notice that we're watching this.
We're, we've got theright people in oversight.
The dilemma is thatthis is not on a survey.
It's a political survey.
You're not rewardedfor talking about this.
You're rewarded for Given out benefitsfor cutting taxes or whatever, the

(51:03):
four main issues of the day areincentivized really to solve problems.
And this is a big no you're incentivizedto solve the problems that the people
are interested in, but most peopledon't even know about this issue.
It's not on the top of their dinner plateconversation about cybersecurity, but
it will be once a lot of their data isstolen and you're starting to see more

(51:24):
information going about data being stolen.
Does it make sense that you would thinkthat the local the governor today would,
it would institute some project or passsome legislation to get funding and go,
I'm going to spend X amount of dollars.
We're going to remediate this.
We're going to do a future state.
I did that.
I did that again.
I had to get legislation to makethe position of cabinet secretary.

(51:49):
So I had to actually go seek legislation.
I didn't have the authority todo that on my own, according
to the state constitution.
So I had to form a secretary of IT.
Information technology.
And then I had to get thatperson approved by the Senate.
So it's a very bureaucraticprocess when you're dealing in
days trying to solve problems.

(52:12):
You work through that and youinformally go and make him a
secretary before you get approval.
But my successor, I don't knowwhat's happened with that since.
He might have got, you could getpolitical pressure by DOT secretary.
I want my IT stuff back.
And tell me this I look at likeCSS span and I see these senators

(52:33):
and these congressmen and they'redebating these bills, and I'm like,
how many of 'em actually know anythingabout cybersecurity and technology?
Are they all lawyers up there?
Who is actually doing this?
It doesn't seem to be mycybersecurity or it pros that
are opining these things, right?
No.
The look, so the congressmanI'm, and the governor's B too.
You only have a certain amount of witts.

(52:55):
To understand and, you couldbe on the banking committee.
It could take you 5 yearsto understand basic banking.
Compared to the people who areor so you rely on your staffs,
usually the committee staff.
So you're relying on 26 and 27year olds and a few veterans.
And then the lobbyists come inwho are protecting their stuff

(53:17):
and they'll set up meetings withevery member of the committee and
go, this is what you need to do.
And they might be giving conflictinginformation and the lobbyists will
bring a technical expert with themand try to teach the political
decision maker, the basic one or two.
My weakness, when I became governor,I did not have health and human

(53:38):
services background as a mayor.
I was an infrastructure guy, soI hired a really well qualified
health and human services secretary.
And she literally, in my first fivemeetings, hell, even in my last five
meetings, almost talked to me like afirst grader trying to explain it because
I just had no bandwidth in that area.
And I had to rely on her trustto tell me what I needed to know.

(54:04):
And you need those rightstaffers around you.
You're in that position to make thosedecisions and, but having qualified staff
to advise you, I think that's critical.
It's extremely important.
You gotta have a trust your relationship.
And sometimes you're disappointed.
Sometimes people will tell youhalf the information you need
to know because they're saving,they're protecting their rear end.

(54:30):
And again, most people, 90%, 95 percent ofthe people I dealt with were great people.
The 5 percent can give you A heck ofa problem and you're going to see that
the federal state and local level and alot of it is they're just not qualified.
I had, I inherited a, I remembermy secretary of health and

(54:52):
human services coming in.
And by the way, he had about a 20billion budget, including federal money.
She came in and said governor,we're 500 million over budget.
I said.
Why am I finding this out now?
Because the person reviewingthe data only recorded the data,
never interpreted the data.
They were being paid just towrite it down, to record it.

(55:15):
We didn't have anyoneinterpreting the data.
Say, hey, there's a trend going onhere that started five months ago.
You're in deep trouble.
Reading the report, so to speak.
So you apply that to data security.
You might have a personwho's been hired to do this.
And if it's outside their realm, I'lllet someone else worry about that.

(55:35):
It's that's again, I'mnot throwing stones.
It's just human dynamics.
Yeah.
Do you think every state's different?
It's just the yes,that's the other problem.
Every state's different.
And and yet the federal government hasto share with state certain information
and vice versa, because they share.
Systems regarding federalprograms being transferred to

(56:00):
the states for implementation.
So the security of thoseprograms and monies and the
controls could be different.
We had issues, and I have a hundredcounties in the state of North Carolina,
and we do audits of the 100 counties,and there'd be maybe five counties that
had lost total control of the funds.

(56:24):
Think how long it took to do the audit.
Yeah, I can imagine.
And they were.
Again, nothing illegal.
They just didn't havethe management at it.
You're talking about ruralcounties with 10,000 people in it.
So how do you get them to understandhigh tech issues cybersecurity
issues, and how to remediate them?

(56:44):
We probably start doing it for them.
You ain't got time.
Built in as a part of the service.
Yeah.
You just think you haven't got time.
By the way, it's notjust the rural county.
Some of the largest counties werehaving the largest problems because the
bureaucracy was so deep and even some ofthe skill sets were so poor, but they just

(57:05):
hung around long enough to get promoted.
The Peter principle again, not bad people.
It's just that, everyone's, you're justtrying to move on to the next fire.
Yeah.
And I could see opportunity where,if the governor had an advisory board
and had people like myself and othersthat would advise some of these
things and doing it from a volunteerperspective, I have that I had a lot

(57:29):
of advisory boards, but the more boardsyou have, the more time consumption
and you only have so much time.
Thank you.
And the day in such a large organization.
I had 15 20 departments reportingto me and my chief of staff.
How many advisory boards and thosesome of those departments for huge
departments where I could have advisoryboards by the dozens within one

(57:53):
department, but they were importantand they'd report to my secretary.
So the advisory boards do a real goodjob and asking the right questions.
Where they do a bad job is whensome of the people will go try to
take over from operation standpointas opposed to advisory board stand
up and then it creates more work.

(58:14):
I want the advisory board.
I want to see a report on this andwho's got time for a report, right?
You've had a fascinating life.
It's always great talking to you.
Unfortunately, we ran outof time, but no problem.
It is great to get your perspective ongovernment and what works, what doesn't
the good, the bad, the ugly it's human.

(58:34):
Yeah.
And you've, you always lookat it from the outside.
You have no idea.
You've got a personal experience as amayor and as a governor and the rest
of us look at it and go, I would preferthat type of position rather than a
Congressman, because it seems like you'reworking and fixing things, it's like
a Congressman, Congressman is a waste.
That was my dream was to be acongressman, but once I became

(58:54):
mayor, I said, I could, because.
I enjoy management.
I enjoy operations.
I don't, I'm not a day to dayoperations guy, but I know what
questions asked for operations, whatdo, but I could never do it myself.
And I admit that you canprovide good governance of it.

(59:15):
Yeah, that was one of my strengths.
I had many weaknesses andit was one of my strengths.
My knowledge and aptitude of I.
T.
Was that of a first grader?
But that's sometimes help because Iwasn't afraid to ask the questions.
Even I didn't allow I.T.
Or any other department to useacronyms in my staff meetings.
No acronyms were allowed.

(59:35):
There you go.
That's a good rule to have insome cases alphabet soup for sure.
Yeah.
I so appreciate you coming on the show,governor, giving your perspective.
What time is your radio program?
Just for everybody.
I'm only doing Wednesdays now.
I used to have the number onemorning show in Charlotte.
From 8 to 10.
And now I'm only doingWednesdays from 9 to 10.

(59:57):
But I'm getting involvedsome other things right now.
No labels is somethingI'm very interested in.
It's a group of bipartisan groupas we're divided as a nation.
No labels is again.
I'm with Joe Lieberman, a Democrat.
I'm a Republican and Ben Chavis andLarry Hogan, two Republicans, two

(01:00:17):
Democrats who are going We can do better.
And if we have a divided nation, wegot to start talking to each other.
Ben thought I was some right wingextremist, and I thought he was some
left wing protester, radical, violentguy, and we found out we're neither one.
And we agree on 90 percent of theissues, and we've become very close
friends, along with Joe Lieberman,former vice senator and vice president.

(01:00:41):
We've become very close friends,and we're trying to lead by example.
And we might have a presidential candidatecome next March, April, if the current
status quo remains, but we'll see.
We'll see.
Let me know.
It's great to hear bipartisanship andhear that it actually occurs, because
when you look at the news and the media,it doesn't appear that's occurring.
No what's the most important first iscivility first, and agree to disagree

(01:01:05):
and don't turn to violence, and bothBen Chavis and I are very concerned.
I've had to deal with violencecalling the National Guard and he's
of course He was arrested improperlyfor violence that he wasn't active in.
And he went through eight years of prison.
And so we've both beencanceled in some ways too.
We better start talking to each otheras human beings, like we've done in
this podcast and be honest and upfront,we've got the best country in the

(01:01:30):
world, don't take it for granted.
Yeah, I completely agree.
And I can tell you, I moved toCharlotte about 12 years ago
and the city is phenomenal.
The school systems, the taxes, when Ifirst moved to Charlotte, the 12 years
ago, I rented a place right aroundHuntersville area, but it was 1, 500
for a five bedroom, 3, 600 square foot.

(01:01:53):
Good old days.
It was great.
Low taxes school systems.
We moved now in south Charlotteand just really continued.
And we love our city and I spentsix years as city councilman and
14 years as mayor, so I've devoteda 20 years of my life in it.
And so I still care about what happensto it, although it's been, I've been
outta office as mayor since two, 2009.

(01:02:15):
I left office.
I might have just missed you.
And then I appreciate people whofind that this is my skill set is
bureaucracy of government runninggovernment, the administration of
government and people who focus onthat and want to be experts of that.
I appreciate that.
I think that's a noble thing.
There's some good people and wehad some good people in the city.

(01:02:35):
But it's getting tough.
The market demand is we got to getour colleges and universities to adapt
real quick and our two year schools andour high schools or China's doing it.
Russia's doing it.
You're going to catch up fast.
Better catch up.
God bless.
God bless.
Thanks Pat.
And I'll talk to you soon, Governor,and you have a good evening.
That's fine.
Thank you very much.
Thank you for joiningCyber Security America.

(01:02:57):
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(01:03:20):
executive leader and navigate today'scomplex world of cybersecurity.
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