Speaker 0 | 00:09.441

Hi, nerds. I’m Michael Moore, hosting this podcast for Dissecting Popular IT Nerds. I’m here with Michael Noe, Director of Information Technology for Serva Group. Welcome to the program, Michael. I want to get your name right. Is it Noe or is it Noe?

Speaker 1 | 00:25.532

The proper pronunciation is Noe.

Speaker 0 | 00:28.074

Noe. Michael Noe.

Speaker 1 | 00:29.355

Yep. I grew up pronouncing it no because when my dad was in boot camp, the company commander, which was an E7 or chief, which is what I actually retired from, from the reserves. You don’t you don’t correct them when he’s when you’re in boot camp. So when when he started pronouncing it, no, my dad said, yes, sir. And it just never changed it. And that’s how I grew up pronouncing it. So my wife and daughter, daughters all pronounce it no. And just through force of habit, I still pronounce it no.

Speaker 0 | 00:58.520

You could go either way, but it’s actually knowing.

Speaker 1 | 01:01.440

So that is correct. Yep.

Speaker 0 | 01:02.661

So that’s the one we’ll use for you, right?

Speaker 1 | 01:05.281

Yep. That works.

Speaker 0 | 01:05.882

That’s a good, that’s a good, that’s an interesting way. Hey, listen, he said it was no, that’s what we’re doing. So, so Michael Noe. All right. So let’s, let’s talk about our, our first thing. We’re going to go into what’s our icebreaker segment that we, we have on this program. It’s called Random Access Memories. And I ask you a question. And you just respond with whatever comes to your head first, right? Super fun. Enjoy. Your first question is, what is the most overused IT acronym?

Speaker 1 | 01:39.929

I don’t know if you’d call it an acronym, but single pane of glass. I am so tired of hearing that. It’s not an acronym, but it’s-No,

Speaker 0 | 01:47.152

but you know what? I’m going to take it. I’ll let that go.

Speaker 1 | 01:50.533

I’m so tired of hearing that. Everything on single pane of glass just gets tiring after a while.

Speaker 0 | 01:56.656

That’s a good one. All right. What is your favorite piece of IT-related trivia?

Speaker 1 | 02:04.240

I once went to a symposium in the St. Cloud area through the Chamber of Commerce, St. Cloud, Minnesota. And they put a picture on the screen of an acoustic coupled modem. And the guy that was giving the talk there said, what is this? And somebody piped up modem. And I piped up acoustic coupled modem. So I won a 256 gig. encrypted thumb drive, you know, with the little five buttons on it. So not very many people know what an acoustic coupled modem is anymore.

Speaker 0 | 02:30.784

Okay. Well, let’s go ahead and educate our audience so that they can all win things if they are in that same boat.

Speaker 1 | 02:38.110

Well, what it is, is a square rectangular, relatively flat box. It’s got two rubber cups on it. And for those who remember the days when you actually had a phone on your desk that had push buttons on it and an actual hook. that the handpiece went across. You would take that off. You would dial a number. You would wait for the other modem to answer. And you’d put it, the two sides, the receiver and the transmitter, basically, in these cups on the acoustic coupled modem. And that’s how you would create the connection. You didn’t connect up. It was actually an audio analog connection, if you want to call it that.

Speaker 0 | 03:12.512

And they’re sending the audio through the two.

Speaker 1 | 03:15.633

Through the handset.

Speaker 0 | 03:16.714

That’s amazing. I mean, that is, I’m going to tell you, I have never. heard of that. I mean, I know that, that, you know, that they use the tones and stuff like that, but I’ve never heard of that, uh, being used like that, but wow.

Speaker 1 | 03:30.019

I think the max you could get was about 1200 bought.

Speaker 0 | 03:32.660

Hey, well, I think the first modem I had was like a 2400 bought. I think I still have it somewhere at this house actually. Um, uh, because I just, I don’t know. I, I’m sentimental on some of the old computer equipment and I don’t want to get rid of it. So, you know, I still got like a five, a five and a quarter floppy. hanging out at the house and I just can’t bring myself to throw it away. Right. Well,

Speaker 1 | 03:54.372

here’s another one for you. How about a seven inch floppy?

Speaker 0 | 03:57.594

Seven inch flop. Okay. So, oh yeah, you beat me there.

Speaker 1 | 04:00.577

That’s even older.

Speaker 0 | 04:03.540

I don’t even remember that. So there you go. Mine started with the, with the five and a quarter. So that’s, you know, that’s where I, that’s where I was. Oh man. Wow. You know, by the way, forgive my audience. here. It’s been kind of crazy at my house. I have, I think, six kittens. Basically, we’re fostering the mama kittens there as well. And one has already found a home, which is good. But it’s been kind of crazy at this house, as you probably can tell.

Speaker 1 | 04:37.710

Well, actually, it’s just the opposite in mind. We just recently lost. We had two dogs. We lost them both in the last… four and a half months or so with cancer. So we’re actually doing just the opposite. We’re looking at adopting one right now. In fact, not more than an hour ago, we had a Zoom call with the adoption. organization to make sure that, uh, did a zoom call and did a tour of the house to make sure that, you know, they’re the, the dog that we’re looking at fostering to adopt, um, is not, you know, going to a bad place, so to speak. If we pass that, it’s fine. So,

Speaker 0 | 05:08.969

well, you know, uh, um, you know, it’s just, it is, it just, it pains me right when I hear about, uh, um, you know, uh, losing their pets and stuff. Cause that’s family. That’s family. That is,

Speaker 1 | 05:20.332

but it’s amazing in a way because, you know, they’re animals. They’re not. human beings, but they do have a way of getting into your heart. So it is a tough thing to do, especially when you’re the one that brings them into the vet to put them to sleep.

Speaker 0 | 05:33.217

Yeah. And Ben there, that is not a fun thing to do. Unfortunately, it’s part of being a pet owner, right? Because you want to be there for all of their moments, including the ones that are not so easy. Awesome that you’re adopting another dog. That’s fantastic. you know, I think that we have a responsibility, right. Uh, to, um, you know, be able to help, help these animals and stuff like that. And, you know, um, I know I, uh, uh, donate some of my time, uh, to a cat shelter and doing it for them. And, uh, it’s just one of the things that, you know, I, I love doing, uh, because I, I, I love giving back in some ways and stuff like that, but I, it’s great to hear that you’ve got that going. And I hope that, uh, whoever, whoever you get, uh, you know, it crawls into your heart. and you end up getting some of that love back. That’s great. That’s awesome.

Speaker 1 | 06:28.336

Yeah, it’s another. Well, we’ve tended towards standard poodles in the past few years. And this one is at least part poodle. And they are a unique breed, and they can be headstrong, but they’re smart. And you do have to be strict, and you have to be in control, or they’ll control you. Yeah, sure.

Speaker 0 | 06:52.146

That’s true. That’s true. Oh, well, that was a good I, you know, I love kind of diving into some of the personal pieces, too. That’s that’s actually it’s actually really nice. I’m glad they’re in the into a spot now where you’re you’re going to be adopting. That’s that’s fantastic. Let’s let’s jump in to more of this program here from an IT perspective. I was looking into your background and I have so many questions. I mean, you know, I feel like we’re going to go. So you’re going to end up probably jumping on the podcast again because of all the amount of questions I have about what could go on. But let’s start off. You’re, like I said, at Serva Group. But when I looked at that, I did see that when I looked up Serva, that there’s a connection somehow. And I’m going to let you try to explain this to Entrans. And Entrans, you spent 10 years or more there?

Speaker 1 | 07:43.977

Yeah, well, so. 2012, it’s been 11 years this year already, I guess. I originally started working for a company called Polar Tank Trailer, which was Polar Corporation. And part of that corporation had a couple other parts. One of them was a company called Rockwell American, which sold trailer parts and manufactured small trailer parts and polar service centers. And about seven years ago, American Industrial Partners, AIP, who is a big organization, owns a lot of companies, bought… polar corporation immediately split off part of the company called rockwell america and the trailer parts and then merged us with another company called heil trailer so if you see any of the tank trailers rolling around that have the red heil h-e-i-l on the back or polar in blue and white yeah that’s what we built okay oh yeah okay right so and then there’s a couple of the parts of the of the what we call the trailer division one of them is a company called jarco out of salem illinois and they do um more propane stuff the tanks and stuff like that trailers and and truck beds where they where they mount the uh the propane tanks and then a big uh company that does more huge flatbed trailers called caitlin cyber out of gates gatesville texas which is just west of waco and then uh then what we call a tank division which has three plants one is in juarez and juarez mexico one is in opal minnesota and it’s actually a holding for an address and if you you take your finger and put it in the center part of the state of Minnesota, you’re pretty close to where we are and where I office from. I actually office out of my home in Sox Center. And then we’ve got a plant and the corporate headquarters for Entrans is in Athens, Tennessee. And that is the lion’s share of Entrans International. Then there’s this, we kind of, in some ways, called our redheaded stepchild that nobody really wants to talk about, Serva Group. And I’ve been, you know, dealing with them and working with them for as long as I’ve been a part of Entrans. but never on the payroll and never to the extent I’m at now. I was dabbling the servers. I managed their servers to some extent, but for the most part, I really didn’t get into the business end of it until I came on board full time here on Serva or with Serva in February.

Speaker 0 | 09:56.341

So, OK, so, you know, these are the these trailers and and I know I had it in my head and I, you know, I brought up a picture of it and I’m, you know, and I’m like, yeah, OK, exactly what I was thinking. It’s those, you know, those trailers, those kind of sometimes oval, sometimes circular silver barrel looking long trailer trailers that you have. Those are the those are the ones. And so these are manufactured.

Speaker 1 | 10:24.405

uh by the by the company that you or the companies that you know through the that you work for that’s that’s right right right um basically the oval trailers are more than likely petroleum trailers the more the round ones are food grade and other bulk liquids and there’s also i think they call them the deep drop trailers you’ll see some of them that look like they have two or three funnels on the bottom yeah those are those are dry bulk trailers and they um we make those as well wow so yeah basically we With the exception of, you know, for example, the the braking systems and the undercarriage, it’s pretty much all manufactured. The frames, the tanks with, you know, that’s all manufactured in-house.

Speaker 0 | 11:03.059

Wow. So, yeah. And I can see these and I see exactly what you’re talking about. So this is I mean, this is must have blown up post-pandemic. Right. This I mean, this must have been huge with everybody, you know, all the amount of transportation and items and stuff like that. Have you seen that?

Speaker 1 | 11:22.813

I don’t know if I’d use I mean, it’s been ramping up. It basically follows the economy. So as the economy went into a slump, so did the trailer business because what happens is a lot of times what they’ll do is they’ll keep their older stuff and they won’t buy new trailers.

Speaker 0 | 11:35.717

Okay, gotcha,

Speaker 1 | 11:36.137

okay. But as the economy turns, then there’s an uptick in the amount of trailers. So right now I think they’re booking business out into mid-24. That’s how much of a backlog there is.

Speaker 0 | 11:46.360

Well, I would say that that’s pretty Yeah, I would say that that’s pretty successful at the moment then if you’re booking business out over a year. Yeah,

Speaker 1 | 11:54.386

but I mean, typically it’s out at least several months. So they can schedule work and they can schedule, you know, bring your stock in because we’re talking about bringing in, you know, pallets that are, you know, 12, 16, 18 feet long with flat metal on it. You know what I mean? And they create the barrels and things like that.

Speaker 0 | 12:10.981

Well, so let’s let’s get into how I.T. Um, and I, my brain’s already kind of think about a million different ways it would, it would intertwine with that, but let, let’s talk about how IT, uh, connects in with, uh, building, uh, these, um, these massive trailers and then, you know, uh, you know, selling them back out. Right.

Speaker 1 | 12:33.637

Well, I mean, I guess, you know, the, the, the popular frame, the phrase is now is what operational, uh, technology OT. Yeah, basically they’ve got I know that there are plasma cutters that are computer controlled, which unfortunately still runs XP embedded. And there’s nothing they can do about. Yeah, exactly. There’s nothing you can do about that because these things are probably not upgradable anymore.

Speaker 0 | 12:56.387

But the common, you know, sorry to cut you off for a second, but I just want to point this out because I’ve talked to a lot of people. And I also used to work in manufacturing. And in that. What I did notice is a lot of these, you know, these tools, these things that the massive things that people use and stuff like that in their specialty, they do operate on these older operating systems and they don’t update them. You know, so that poses a risk because, you know, you try to connect one of those to the network. Now you have a now you have an opening and you have some some issues there. So that is I’m glad you brought that up because that’s one of the. big pain points that manufacturing it that works with manufacturing, uh, seems to always bring up is that these, uh, you know, third party specialty, you can’t get this anywhere else. They’ve got the lock on it and they’re going to run this old operating system on it that, you know, that you almost can’t get anymore. And to get the new one, you have to pay through the roof, right?

Speaker 1 | 14:01.259

Well, yeah. I mean, I, I don’t know. I mean, I, I didn’t have any, any management over the. upgrade ability or replacement of the controllers that run these devices. Right. It’s just, you know, if it works, you don’t mess with it, but it is a risk. You know, there is a vulnerability there. I mean, in a previous life, actually, before I came into pole where I worked for a plastics company and that, yeah, they would do store displays and it was a lot of the similar equipment because they had computer controlled routers. Okay. But we had, I had one table saw, huge table saw or, you know, table type saw. that ran MS-DOS in Italian that I had to figure out how to work around. Our laser, before we upgraded the entire system, it was really odd because we’d have a computer on a workstation. next to the actual laser cutter itself that they could do modifications to the programs that ran the laser cutter and then what happened was is that program would store the files on a share that actually was an SMB share on the controller that was running Windows 98 and

Speaker 0 | 15:09.278

there’s a lot of and this that’s since been replaced but that’s what we dealt with until not too many years ago yeah I mean and that’s I mean I mean if you if you’re uh dealing with that Just a few years back, to me, that’s remarkable that that even still exists. But I’ve seen it. Yeah.

Speaker 1 | 15:27.969

And the problem is nobody wants to be running thumb drives around or floppies or whatever you want to use, so they’re on the network. And they’re accessing shares on a server, pulling data files down to modify or just put onto the systems to cut out pieces out of a piece of sheet metal, parts out of a sheet.

Speaker 0 | 15:46.280

And there’s no updates, so no security there. No software is going to work to protect that.

Speaker 1 | 15:55.225

And you’re running so lean that if you try and install anything like remote management or antivirus, there’s so few resources that it just tanks. The system won’t even run with that on it.

Speaker 0 | 16:04.910

Yeah, that is such a big risk. I’m glad you brought that up. Okay, so I’m sorry. I know we derailed, but keep telling us about it. Keep telling us about how this goes and works with IT.

Speaker 1 | 16:18.699

Well, and then we’ve got a robotic welder that will, if you see some of them, they’re almost like they’re, okay, the ones that you see that are oval or a nice sleek barrel, those have a jacket on them. They’re more than likely insulated. You see some of them that are just a barrel with ribs around it. And there is a robot there. Now, keep in mind that I’ve been, I don’t know what they’ve done in the past few months. I mean, I’ve kind of stepped away to go to the other part of the company. But. But there’s a robot that would actually weld those rings around that barrel or the column heads, basically the end caps of the barrel. So there’s a computer that does the plasma cutting, which cuts parts out of sheet metal. There’s a computer that runs a laser cutter, which is actually an industrial laser that cuts parts out of sheet metal again with more precision than probably the plasma cutter can. We’ve got a system that handles the robot that welds the rings and things onto these barrels. Um, obviously there’s systems that will, uh, run diagnostics and things on the ECU units that control the brakes. Um, I’m trying to think of what else here. I mean, that’s, that’s, you know, complete aside from, from any of the systems that, you know, run, you know, our ERP system that would manage inventory and stuff like that and the computers that are back on, on the shop floor. So,

Speaker 0 | 17:34.909

so yeah, so I guess, you know, if we break this down, right, you must have a, um, an order taking system, right? Does that, how do people, how would people go in and order these? Do they call? Do they, you know, do they, is there a form they fill out? Like, how does that work when, if, like, if I was wanting to get, wanted to order one of these things, right? What, how would I even do that?

Speaker 1 | 18:02.407

And this is where I get a little bit hazy. I know that they’re working, at the time when I left that part of the company, they’re working on a portal where you could kind of configure your own device or configure your own trailer. But for the most part, they would be working through inside sales or salespeople that are.

Speaker 0 | 18:17.905

That makes sense.

Speaker 1 | 18:18.605

And then there was a quoting system that they could build a configuration. And then based on that, then it would get priced out. And these parts would go into our ERP system and, of course, start the process of ordering and procurement and timing and all that kind of stuff. But let’s see what else. And I think there’s some dealers that do that as well. I’m trying to think now. I’ve been away from it for a while, so I’m unfortunately have to dredge up some memories here.

Speaker 0 | 18:45.370

Well, let’s take actually let’s let’s use this as kind of a way to kind of move into what you’re doing now. Right. Specifically. Right. So what what’s that what’s that change been like?

Speaker 1 | 18:59.939

Interesting. I had I mentioned earlier that I had been working with the server group on some of their. infrastructure and their servers before I actually moved on to the payroll. But I didn’t realize how much I didn’t know. To a large extent, I’m, well, to step back just a minute, we’ve got two guys that are already on IT and server group besides myself now. We’ve got one guy that is mainly our ERP guy who was doing some of the end user support. Right. We’ve recently, about a year ago, brought on an onsite person in our Tulsa facility, Catoosa, actually, Oklahoma. And then I came on in February. So. In a sense, I’m essentially building an IT organization or IT department from scratch. Wow. I mean, we’ve been just kind of addressing issues as they come up to keep the wheels on and keep things running. But there’s a lot of things that need to be done. separately because it is a separate line of business from the rest of Entrance. You know,

Speaker 0 | 19:59.932

but what a, you know, yes, difficult, you know, to do that. And I’ve had to do that a few times too. But what a privilege to be able to design your team from the ground up, right? It’s a lot of work, but it is also, you get to design and create. uh, your team and have it run the way that it wants. Uh, how has that been?

Speaker 1 | 20:28.803

We are a pretty small company when it comes to an organization users. Um, so basically I can’t do a lot as far as a team goes yet. Um, I’ve got, like I said, I’ve got one guy in Tulsa. I’ve got my ERP guy and I’ve got a managed services group for, we’ve got a plant in Calgary, Canada, and we’ve got a managed service company that’s handling that for now. Um, What that looks like here in a few months, I don’t know yet. Right now, since I am still the senior technical guy, that’s where a lot of my time has been spent. So it’s taking away from the quote-unquote managing pieces like policies, procedures, onboarding, offboarding, all that kind of stuff. I’m still dealing with a lot of… You’re still playing fires. Yes, and just things that need addressing. We’ve got a facility in Greensburg, Pennsylvania. That isn’t even, we connect our facilities through on-site, site-to-site VPNs. They’ve got nothing. They’re not connected yet. All they can do is get on the internet and do a client VPN into our systems. But that doesn’t do anything for the hand scanners to hand manage inventory or anything like that. While it’s a fire, it kind of isn’t because it’s not an immediate, oh my God, production’s down, something’s broke. We’ve got to fix it kind of situation. But that doesn’t mean that they don’t need to get online as soon as possible.

Speaker 0 | 21:48.093

Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, so. So this is actually good because, you know, you’re you know, it sounds like you need to do a whole bunch of different things. You’ve got your your hand in a whole bunch of different areas and you’re trying to, you know, figure out kind of where to where to start. So you’re prioritizing, you’re looking through all these things and you’re and you’re getting this work done. And there’s a whole host of different types of things. How does your background, you know, kind of how does your background connect to having to react to different sorts of problems? And they may be, you know, one with an ERP, one with a technical problem with the Internet, one with a, you know, a networking issue, one over here where they’re just trying to ask you what’s the best way to set something up. Right. So you’ve got all these different types of things hitting your way. On top of also probably management that would, you know, if it’s not hitting you yet, will be coming, right? And policy and all that other stuff, right? So you’ve got all these different things. How’s your background in IT? Because, you know, looking at your stuff, it spans, it’s a vast background here. How does that compare and give you the experience to handle this?

Speaker 1 | 23:07.670

My background has always been, even the positions that you know, where IT director, IT manager, anything like that was pretty much more technical than not. So the technical piece, figuring things out, making things work, that’s the easy part. I mean, short of, you know, supply chain issues, like I mentioned earlier, my facility in Greensburg, I can’t get them online because I can’t get a firewall from Cisco. They’re just not available, for example.

Speaker 0 | 23:33.764

Oh, that is a big problem right now. Yes, it is. Networking equipment is just so far back. I mean, it’s like a year back trying to secure that stuff.

Speaker 1 | 23:41.220

Yeah, I mean, I want a simple little firewall from Cisco for a facility that has maybe 10 people in it. So I don’t need much. And a month ago, the earliest delivery date was August 3rd.

Speaker 0 | 23:54.409

Yeah.

Speaker 1 | 23:55.109

So I’m doing some other things, trying to get something done there quicker. I’ve just discovered that one of my band-aids isn’t going to work, unfortunately, because the equipment that was provided by the ISP can’t do what I want it to do. But like I said, for the most part, when it comes to the technical stuff, I can get around that. That’s my strong point. I’ve got, you know, the leadership experience and stuff like that. You know, I’ve got experience with that, too. I mentioned earlier, maybe before we went on recording here, that I’m a retired chief petty officer out of the Navy Reserve. So leadership, I’m good with, too. It’s the building the IT department and dealing with the non-technical things that I personally am struggling with to an extent. So in some respects, I’m kind of having to kind of learn that on the fly.

Speaker 0 | 24:39.852

Gotcha. Well, let’s actually let’s take a second, because this is such a good use, such a good use case to educate everybody here about that. So let’s let’s start talking about some of those items that. You’re learning on the fly. Some of the some of the things that are hitting you that you have to deal with, because I guarantee you, if you’re having to deal with them, other people have or are dealing with them right now. Let’s start and pick one and let’s let’s go at it.

Speaker 1 | 25:12.468

Well, part of the one of the things I’m having that I’m going to have to deal with is, for example, just just I got to basically start over on. on all the policies in it and that includes offboarding onboarding um internet use policies it’s it’s we’re talking about a set of policies that have not been updated since 2016 and really don’t reflect the company as it is and where it does reflect the company leans more towards the entrance or the or the trailer division part of the company and not server group specifically um so i mean that’s one piece uh another is just everything that needs to go into building security policy, aside from other IT policies, getting up to speed there because it’s been operating a bit too fast and loose, for example. I mean, unfortunately, when I started here, there was a security group called local admins. And guess what group was in local admins? Domain users.

Speaker 0 | 26:11.508

Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 1 | 26:12.468

Yeah. So that’s a problem. That’s, I mean, that’s, for a start, that’s what I’m looking into looking at simply because And what’s driving that is, I mentioned before that Entranze is owned by AIP. And about every year to 18 months, they do an assessment coming down from the investment group that owns the companies to figure out where their portfolio companies stand as far as cybersecurity goes. So I got to balance that and work on that piece and everything else that’s going on as far as trying to dial in the policies and just fill everything that needs to go into. I don’t like to use world class because we don’t have enough. people to cover everything. So I’m going to have to bring in, you know, vendors and things or pay for services on top of all that. So basically this goes right back to building the IT department. You know what I mean?

Speaker 0 | 27:01.785

So, yeah. And having written several IT policies and procedures from scratch and editing others for other companies, I know exactly what you mean on that. And so here’s the process, right? You have, you know, you can always start out and actually something made it completely easier. to do right off the bat, right? You want to start off with a template, right? What better to get templates than, you know, using your AI to just, you know, to start it off, right? Hey, write me a policy about this, and it’ll just write the policy. Now that gives you a template, right? Now you have to take that template, and you have to customize it. And when we talk about policy and procedure, right, we talk about first creating the policy first, right? That’s the generic ones. We’re not going to include… you know, we don’t want to include a manufacturer, specific manufacturers, things. And there want to be as general as possible when we create these things so that we can create a workable policy. That could be, you know, if I replace a sonic wall with a Cisco switch or vice versa, then then you’re like, oh, you know what? I can I don’t have to update the policy. I might have to update the procedure later on, which talks about how we do things, but maybe not the policy. Right. So. So we get the policy straight and how we and how we go through that as we say, great, well, I’ve got this very generic policy. Let me see what what part of this generic policy works for my organization and let’s see what it doesn’t. And let’s go through the business requirements and see if we have to adjust any of the business requirements because now we want to be more secure. Or if we want to make sure we get that that business to say, you know what, we’re going to accept this risk, but we’re going to have a. a control to compensate for that right uh you know on that thing so and an example would be hey if i create a policy where i have to keep all my operating systems up to date right you know every operating system i have has to be patched and all that type of stuff great you can do that and but then what you need to do and you don’t have to like tweak anything all you have to do is write that out and then you make a document in which you uh um which you you know have a pending append on there and you say the following uh, you know, items because of the, because of specific business items, and you can list the reasons are unable to do this. Right. So we know that we can’t update those machines, those little machines, right? So because we can’t update those machines, we’re going to list them out. We’re going to identify them. And then we’re going to put a compensated control for why we can’t do that and how we’re getting around that and making sure that we, we, uh, a lot for that. So this is, you know, this is what you’re going to have to. You’re going to have to do. And yeah, it’s a massive task. But the good thing is you can marry that up with… The same thing you’re doing, which is bringing all the stuff up to speed. You have a great spot where you’re in a great spot. Unfortunately, people, you don’t think like that because right. You’re like, everything’s right. Hit me all.

Speaker 1 | 30:04.580

You see this big black cloud on the horizon of things that you need to do.

Speaker 0 | 30:07.982

Right. But that the fun part is, is now you you get to go, OK, I know that I control the direction, you know. I get to dictate the direction. Now, you know, there might be other things. Obviously, there’s cost and all things that figure into that. But you get to dictate the direction we go in as long as the business gets to put their say and say, okay, well, here’s your budget, here’s your this, here’s your that. And then you can say, okay, well,

Speaker 1 | 30:33.323

if you do this,

Speaker 0 | 30:33.843

here’s what I can do with it.

Speaker 1 | 30:37.766

And this is where it gets interesting because I don’t have a budget.

Speaker 0 | 30:41.828

Really?

Speaker 1 | 30:42.589

No, basically, all of Entrance seems to operate this way. Um, for example, I want to look at log management. For example, I can’t do that in house. I don’t have enough near enough resources to do that. So that’s something I’m gonna have to farm out. Okay. I know I need to do that. I’ll know I’ll need to do it next year, but I have no budget. I have to go ask for the money and prove the case every time.

Speaker 0 | 31:06.357

Gotcha. Well, and actually I’ve, I’ve dealt with and been in companies like that where, where you’ve had to, uh, you know, I have to do this use case and stuff. And the best way to start that use case to get to get those items is to write those policies and procedures. Right. So you write the policies, you write the procedures back on the back end. You you get to the point where you do it and say, OK, guys, I’ve written the policy and procedures. Right. And I’m going to need you to sign off on them so that we can implement them. So we so we check that risk. Right. Well,

Speaker 1 | 31:39.959

they read through them, they sign off on them and then you can point and say, see, you sign this. Now we need to do it.

Speaker 0 | 31:43.802

Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 1 | 31:44.562

I see where you’re going with that.

Speaker 0 | 31:45.924

Right. And there’s another piece, too. Right. So the other item that you have, I mean, listen, cybersecurity ultimately is a business is a business thing. Right. I mean, if they if they don’t want to do cybersecurity at some point that say they’re going to run up to a point where they go, oh, we should have done it. Right. I mean, so I mean, that this is it’s not a it’s not a if it’s a when it’s a when. So. So what your job, right, is to do from a management perspective. And I see this a lot. It’s, you know, for new management or management that has been just popped in this position, they need to find a way to let, to be comfortable, to let, you know, the business know, the executive know, hey, I’m just letting you guys know, here are the items that we need to work on. and I’m going to be working towards these things, and I’m going to give you recommendations. And I will explain the risk of what will happen if you don’t do them, right? And then you can make a business decision, and that’s on you, right? And then I’m going to document it, and we’ll move on. And it doesn’t have to be a, you know, you got to do this, ah, right? It doesn’t have to be. It’s just a, hey, here’s the risk, here’s what’s going on, and here’s how much money it costs, and I need you to make that decision on whether or not you want to invest. And if you don’t want to do it, okay. We’ll set that to the side. Maybe we’ll do it later. And and part of that is creating a, you know, your risk is doing a risk assessment and identifying what your risks are. Right. And going through this stuff, I’m sure, you know, you learn some of this stuff from some of your time in the military. Right. Where you identify your identify all your risks and then you go through and you prioritize them. And then you start going, okay, well, let’s now, this is the priority. Here’s the ones that I would suggest we start work on. And when we create a schedule of implementation and when we’re going to do these based on this, you just display something like that. And then people go, wow, that’s okay. Now I see all the insurmountable tasks I’ve given you. And now let’s start chipping away at them. Well,

Speaker 1 | 34:02.436

and what makes it a little bit easier is that I have actually done exactly that. Well, not exactly that. I mentioned earlier the assessment that the investment group puts on all their portfolio companies. Now, unfortunately, the last one covered all of Entranz. So, for example, if you have one server room with the door unlocked, the whole company is high risk, for example. But I did it last year for all of Entranz, and that included Serva. So I know what’s Serva and what’s not part of that. This year, they’re going to break it out separately. But I can take that report that was generated actually last August. And I might… I work directly for the vice president of operations and a CFO for CERVA. Yeah. Same person. She’s already got that report. So that right there shows the priorities we need to be working on because, one, it just makes sense from the security standpoint. Two, this is the ownership group that owns Entrans telling us this. So that just puts that much more horsepower behind those points, so to speak.

Speaker 0 | 35:04.818

No, I think no, and that’s a great point. And that’s exactly where you’re going to do that. And, you know, I kind of dive back. It never it doesn’t have to be confrontational. It doesn’t have to be anything like that. It’s a business decision. And all cybersecurity is, it’s all a business decision, but with consequences.

Speaker 1 | 35:24.956

Oh, yeah. I mean, you can either pay the money and, you know, more than likely avoid the situation. I mean, nothing’s ever perfect.

Speaker 0 | 35:31.642

No, that’s right.

Speaker 1 | 35:32.222

Or you don’t pay the money and more than likely will get burned. So. Yeah,

Speaker 0 | 35:36.045

it’s, you know, it’s a, you’re right. You were in a, you’ve been put into a tough spot. And the great news is, is if you work through it. I mean, you are going to come out with so much, so much extra. I mean, you’re already like I said, I looked at a lot of, you know, stuff that you that you you’ve done. You’ve got a great history here, including the military service you did. So that that right there just gives you so much experience coming into this. Right. And you’re you’re a nice guy. Easy to talk to, you know. You know, that’s that helps and down to earth and very easy to kind of explain the stuff. That’s that’s where, you know, when it comes to the business side by side, that’s where, you know, that’s where the piece really starts to make sense. Right. If you understand what the business is doing and you had mentioned to like, you know, this part was specific to Serva and this part was, you know, and not specific to this other group. Knowing that that you said that that’s fantastic. That’s a. That shows that you understand where the risk is at, right? And where it needs and where the protections actually need to go. Yeah. You know, because it’s not, you know, not all it’s not all or nothing. Like, you know, you’re protecting certain items that are high risk. You’re looking at the data, where the data is stored, where the data transmits to. And you’re trying to protect that. Right. Some data is super critical and other data is not. Right. Right. So, no, I’m so glad you shared that because it was such a what a great, you know, a great way to, you know, kind of explain to our audience a lot of that, a lot of those pain points. That’s it.

Speaker 1 | 37:29.884

And this time around, you know, I one of the things I did have them agree to and I’m going to remind him of it. The next go around, which I’m actually kind of surprised where today is now, June 30th. I expected it by now, honestly, and I haven’t heard anything yet. I hope this doesn’t prompt it because I’m not ready for it yet. But anyway, because Entrans as a whole runs very thin in IT.

Speaker 0 | 37:53.225

We see that a lot.

Speaker 1 | 37:54.545

Yeah, I’m not surprised. But I did get them to agree to separating out server group from the rest of Entrans. So I’ve got more control and more granularity over what I am responsible for now versus the rest of Entrans.

Speaker 0 | 38:09.015

That’s fantastic.

Speaker 1 | 38:09.956

It’ll be very much more helpful.

Speaker 0 | 38:12.834

Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, I can already tell, you know, in the way that you’re describing these items to me. Right. They have they put in put someone in place that knows the business, knows the business. Well, they knows how to apply the knowledge to what you what you got going on. This is a very, very good stepping stone for you. And and I think I think you’re going to do fantastic. And I think you’re going to have a lot of long nights, right?

Speaker 1 | 38:46.935

I’ve already had a lot of long nights. We’ve actually had ransomware issues a couple of times over the past years. So there’s been a couple of all-nighters already. And we’ve been able to successfully recover from them.

Speaker 0 | 39:00.859

Well, that just shows that you had the proper stuff in place to be able to do that. So those are those controls. You can’t prevent ransomware, right? Nope. You know, you can mitigate the risk, right? And you can try to reduce it. But one person in your organization can click a link and it can get right through. And any protection you put in place will just see you buy. It goes through. Yep. I mean, you can try and put as much stuff that you can in. And it sounds like what you did, which is really good, is you mitigated the back end piece, which is, well, if we do get hit, I want to be able to be able to restore it. Yep. Back up that data.

Speaker 1 | 39:40.568

Oh, you definitely, you know, and then, then we were for it is in these cases that we were fortunate in that it occurred on a weekend. We were able to, I mean, we might have, I don’t even think we lost any production over the weekend, but we were able to be fully operational on Monday morning. Yeah, we, we, we pulled that out. So anyway,

Speaker 0 | 39:57.833

The miracles that IT can do, right?

Speaker 1 | 40:02.474

Yeah. Well, you know, the whole key is to kind of, you know, to some extent does not be noticed. You turn the computer on, you can log in, you get your stuff, everybody, the world’s happy, right? It’s when it breaks or they can’t do what they want. Then they notice and then they need us for something. You know, it’s one of those situations where, you know, in some respects, the less noticed we are, so to speak, the better. Because if we’re not noticed, everything’s working.

Speaker 0 | 40:26.081

Yeah, that’s a good thing. Try to be as invisible as possible, right? You know, IT shouldn’t be the holdup of things. IT shouldn’t be, you know, front and center from. hey, we need this to happen. IT should be showing how they work. I think what you’re saying here is by having a smooth system and operating and not having to call IT every time.

Speaker 1 | 40:46.829

Yep, exactly.

Speaker 0 | 40:47.509

That makes sense to me. So in thinking about what you just said about being prepared for risk and having that stuff in there, we talk about prior to jumping on these, we have a conversation. uh to the audience you know uh we have a kind of a conversation kind of talk about uh um some of the background and and items and stuff and one of the things that he mentioned to me uh was that you used to work with flight simulators when you’re in the navy is that is that correct i this

Speaker 1 | 41:19.404

is a long time ago i was what was used to be in some of the old time navy probably remember what this there’s ratings in the navy TD for training device maintenance, AT for aviation electronics technician. So I was a TD and they used to call us toy doctor. The spelling on that is trade dev men as in tradesmen with a V. And I sometimes wonder how many times I screwed myself out of a job because I spelled tradesmen wrong on my resume. But we used to call us toy doctors. We worked on everything from hydraulics to flight instruments to film projectors to closed circuit TV to flight simulators, computers. Wow. electronics. So I did a little bit of everything there as well. So I worked on flight simulators out of San Diego, North Island, San Diego, California area, full motion simulators. Although the, uh, the visuals on those were very, very, very crude working on deck. If you remember what deck is, who deck was or what company that was PDP 1145. Holy moly. Wow. I used to troubleshoot those to the component level. I’d have an old scope. and an extender board, and I’d have the board on an extender, and I’d be scoping out and tracing logic gates from a print to troubleshoot. That’s how far back I go.

Speaker 0 | 42:33.638

Wow. You know, when you said deck, it raised a thing in my mind. I’m like, I had to Google it real quick. I’m like,

Speaker 1 | 42:41.740

and it was-Digital Equipment Corporation.

Speaker 0 | 42:44.101

Yeah. And I remember having to wheel some of their stuff in to my server room and go, Now, what am I going to do with this? Right. And I used to I used to take these these deck machines and get with companies and virtualize them.

Speaker 1 | 43:02.609

Oh, sure.

Speaker 0 | 43:04.050

Because I’m like, this thing’s going to break. But I say that, but that they would they would last forever.

Speaker 1 | 43:10.253

Yeah. I remember there was a friend of mine when I was in the Navy in San Diego. He had a deck professional 350. And I remember thinking it had a keyboard and a monitor on it. I thought. There’s no front panel on this. What do I do with it? It blew my mind because I could make that thing dance almost, you know, with the old front panel switches. Wow. Yeah, it was weird.

Speaker 0 | 43:34.820

That’s amazing. I don’t even remember the operating system that ran on those digitals, but some of the operating systems I had on those things I had never heard of before.

Speaker 1 | 43:49.591

RT-11. Used to run on the PDP-11s. Vax VMS used to run on the Vax 11.

Speaker 0 | 43:54.897

That’s the one I used. It was VMS. And I would, I said, VMS. I go, I don’t even, that’s an operating system? I don’t even know what that is. And the guy turns around and hands me this giant book and, you know, this binder. Like, and I just, I, you know, dusted the dust off of it and opened it up. And I’m just looking at it going, this is a different language. And I had to learn it. And now I’ve since purged it out of my head. I don’t ever see that again. Right. But for a while I had to, you know, hey, the digital broke and, you know, you had to walk in and you’re like, OK, give me the book and work on it. It’s like working on the devices that you talked about.

Speaker 1 | 44:35.614

Well, I remember I remember working on it was almost the size of a toaster oven and it was a five megabyte hard disk. drive. Single platter. Probably a single platter. It was a cartridge he stuck in there. Oh my gosh. If you want to look at it, it’s a deck RK05. And that platter cartridge is about 14 inches, 16 inches wide.

Speaker 0 | 45:01.957

Oh my gosh. It looks like a toaster oven. It does. It does. And the disc drive looks like a cover to something.

Speaker 1 | 45:11.943

Right. Well, there’s a kind of a front lip that would lift up. It was about three inches wide. Wow.

Speaker 0 | 45:17.505

Yeah. Yeah, this is I encourage somebody to just you know, our audience, go out there and look up this RK05 and just

Speaker 1 | 45:28.548

RK meaning archaic, right?

Speaker 0 | 45:31.009

Right, exactly. Make sure you put that in there because if you don’t, you’ll get different results from different things that are the RK05. But yeah, no, I mean, that’s remarkable. Well, let’s take a minute and let’s go to our last segment, right? Which is the IT crystal ball that we do. Now, IT crystal ball is where we usually go through and figure out what the future of IT is going to be. And so I’m going to, and I absolutely love that you have such a… fond memory of, you know, acoustic modems.

Speaker 1 | 46:15.830

Acoustic coupled modems.

Speaker 0 | 46:18.131

You know, so let’s, let’s take that, that experience that you have, you know, and, and, you know, run it through your head of all the different things that you’ve seen and where we’re at and where we’re going. And then let’s think about what the future of IT is going to hold considering. All the challenges that you face right now that you’ve described on here, right? You know, I got to write policies and procedures, but I have other things that need to get done that are, you know, that I need to fix now so people can work. I’ve got budgetary concerns and for everything that I need to put in place, I need to make sure that I write up these risk things. Let’s think about all of those challenges. Let’s think about the challenges you had in the past. and how you kind of work through those challenges. And let’s put together what you think the future holds, good or bad, for IT.

Speaker 1 | 47:16.673

I think that with, you know, I don’t want to say chat GPT or any of those, but I think that these kind of systems that are the AI, whatever you want to call them, are going to do a lot more of the… I don’t want to say grunt work, but I mean, I think they’re going to be used more and more to do some of the things that, I mean, it’s probably quicker to ask GPT to, I don’t know, write a PowerShell script or something like that. Then it’s going to be quicker to ask it to do it than it will be to go Google and figure out how to do it yourself. So I think there’s a lot of tasks that way that’s going to, that’s basically, I think people are going to have to be maybe less and less. In-depth knowledge of some of the tools that we use.

Speaker 0 | 48:06.730

That’s a great no, no, you’re bringing up a good point. And this kind of goes with how technology has gone. Yeah. I think what you’re saying is, and I’ll use the example. When we had DOS, right, we really had to know how to work in a computer, right? And then it changed. They put an operating environment on top of it, right? Point and click. Right? It became a little easier. Now, other things got become become harder. Right. But now you’re like, I don’t need to figure out how to make the computer do all these things. It just I can automate it and it works on and then it keeps getting like that. Right. Less inside of figuring out how to get the computer to work more about getting the stuff done. Right. That we need to get done.

Speaker 1 | 48:51.827

Right. And, you know, it’s kind of interesting because I look at what I used to work on years ago when I was in the service where I where the processor was. There was a 19 inch rack and it was, you know. 18 inches deep, right? I’m talking to you right now on a laptop with an i9 processor in it. And I look at that compared to the stuff I used to work on when I was in the service. Like, there’s just no comparison anymore. So in another 10, 20 years, could you imagine the power that’s going to be on a desktop or on a laptop? It’s insane. I mean, now it takes a lot of, I don’t know, GPUs or whatever to drive the computation power behind like a chat GPT or something like that. Pretty soon it’s going to be available on your laptop. It’s, you know, Moore’s law may not necessarily apply anymore. People are saying that that’s coming to an end simply because of physics, but just the massive power that they’re going to be able to pack onto some sort of…

Speaker 0 | 49:44.330

integrated circuit package that’ll do all that now you just ask it a question and it’ll do it for you you know what i mean well and and a good point and uh and and you’re correct right because uh this quantum processing now that that

Speaker 1 | 49:59.418

seemed that is just amazing to see the stuff that they’re doing you know may even bring moore’s law back well yeah and it’s crypto guys hang on to your shorts because when uh quantum computing comes in i mean pretty much all bets are off as far as you know encryption standards go

Speaker 0 | 50:14.174

Exactly right. Exactly right. And then that kind of makes kind of throws crypto out the market. That’s a new one, by the way. That’s a good a good point that you bring up. And actually, I’m not sure it’s really been on at least on my the ones I’ve done podcasts. I don’t think that’s really been explored, which is what the effect of cryptography is going to be when quantum computing ultimately allows it to.

Speaker 1 | 50:39.711

I don’t think it’s CISA. Some organization, though, is already working on quantum computing resistant encryption standards. And I’m trying to remember who it was. I remember listening to a podcast or something that talked about that. And I forget what that was. But it is already in consideration to find cryptological standards. It should be.

Speaker 0 | 51:04.752

Because it’s not that far away.

Speaker 1 | 51:07.414

No, it’s not.

Speaker 0 | 51:08.475

I mean, right now, quantum computing. The main issue, and it’s actually it’s funny, I feel like we’ve gone back to mainframe, right, for a minute, right? Because this was the same problem that we had in mainframe. So people were saying like, well, listen, you know, mainframe computers, they’re so big, they’ll never fit in a house. Right. And then what do they do? They fit in my pocket. Right. So so then, you know, then you turn around and you go, OK, quantum. Right. Which they need these special materials and all this stuff. Well, they’re going to get past that, you know. especially when they start, you know, harnessing the knowledge of collective AI and to help them figure out the answers. Right. And that’s I think is I think where you’re getting at here is we’re hitting a future of uncertainty around cryptography standards and how we’re going to handle that.

Speaker 1 | 51:58.892

And just just an uncertain future as far as well. Yeah, maybe that’d be the best way to describe it. I mean, it’s just if somebody it seems like if somebody can think of it. somebody else is going to figure out how to do it. Maybe science fiction is closer to the fact than we maybe think. Who would have thought that the pad or whatever that used to be in the Star Trek shows is now considered an iPad or your cell phone? You know what I mean? It’s just amazing.

Speaker 0 | 52:24.762

No, you’re right. And that seems to be the path on this. Well, nerds, I’m Michael Moore, hosting this podcast for Dissecting Popular IT Nerds. Michael Noe, Michael Noe, Director of Information Technology for the Server Group. He has a lot on his plate. He has a lot of things going his way. And we all wish you luck. And contact me if you ever need any guidance or help on anything. And I’ll be sure to help you out, sir.

Speaker 1 | 52:58.743

That sounds good. Thank you.

Speaker 0 | 53:00.544

Thank you for joining the podcast.

Speaker 1 | 53:02.004

No problem.