The Gate 15 Interview EP 74: Adam Gruszcynski on tribes, ISACs, cybersecurity, celebrating people and bailing out The Rock!

sure let's talk about that we're touching on some of the tribes the tribal pieces and let's talk about some of the i think unique challenges of the tribal community and so when i think about that i really think about two things that sort of pop out to me one We talk about critical infrastructure and there might be water or energy.

With tribal communities, so many tribes manage so many different parts of critical infrastructure.

You've got this broad area that you're responsible for, which is somewhat unique for leaders in roles like yourself.

Correct.

And then you've also got a challenge I think a lot of people might not fully understand, which is the idea of sovereignty, which is so important to this community.

Can you talk a little bit about both of those to help us understand sort of the scope for a tribal community and also that challenge of sovereignty, challenge and awesome opportunity of sovereignty?

Yeah, so we can talk about the challenges of providing for functioning activities like water and power and police.

So within tribal organizations, there is typically a government arm that oversees the services that are provided on a reservation to the tribal members.

gas stations, health, police, water, all of that stuff.

And then there's the casinos and hotels and the hospitalia that they own where you've got to oversee that.

And there's two approaches.

In some organizations, the IT department oversees both avenues.

And in the other instances, it's just you're specific to the hospitality and gaming side or the government side.

Here, we are unique.

The IT department here is just for the casino and hospitality side, and there's a separate IT department on the government side.

We are aware of them.

We do collaborate from time to time, but not that I don't care, but my focus is obviously here.

And other IT organizations, you're the IT department for both, which is a lot more challenging because there's a lot more technology involved that you have to be responsible for and a common theme we're seeing in tribal organizations is the lack of staffing on IT teams and teams running very thin so you have to be able to wear multiple hats and cyber security isn't necessarily one of the hats that gets all the focus you might do it as time permits, which can cause problems because if threat actors can find you and exploit something you might not be doing, well then now you're putting not only the organization that you're working for at risk, but the tribal members as well.

That's right.

And then as to the other part you mentioned, Sovereign, Immunity is something that the tribes hold very dear to themselves.

It's basically what makes them their tribal nation.

It's the rules that they've worked out with the United States government that allow them to act independently and govern themselves.

And one of the challenges that I know I encompass every week here is if you're trying to do business with companies that exist, being able to work through sovereign immunity so that if there are legal things that need to be dealt with, the tribe can still be a sovereign nation and not necessarily fall to the same rules and regulations that typical businesses like Microsoft or oracle or amazon have to have to follow it allows the tribe to remain essentially the tribe and and being able to navigate the legal waters of being able to conduct businesses or connect conduct business with businesses and keeping that separate is is not an easy task necessarily

It's training your vendors on some of the important issues and nuances of working with tribes and it is a little bit different, but it's great to see that.

It's great to see the vendors that do try and get engaged to understand how can we respect your needs and requirements here and be a useful