Hey, hey, hey. This is Lisa A. And you're listening to Who's That Star? On LCC Connect at Lansa Community College. Who's that Star is a behind the scenes show where I sit down and talk with the employees at the college. This is an inside look at LCC where you will have a chance to learn about their passions, projects, what inspires them both at work and in their personal lives. I'm your host, Lisa Alexander. I'm so excited to get a chance to talk to all the people who make LCC great. This show is for you to get to know the people that work at Lansing Community College a little bit more and see what makes them tick. Are you ready? Okay. Let's go see who's today's star. Our star today protects LCC from all the people that want to break into our networks. He is responsible for all aspects of network and information security to protect LCC from internal and external threats. He develops and enforces security policy for the college. He also designs, administers and coordinate the electronic security systems. He's earned a bachelor's degree in Computer science from Iowa State University, a master's degree in Human Resource Management from Troy University, an MBA from Webster University, and started on a PhD in public policy and Administration at the University of Alabama. Beside doing all that, he has a computer network plus, security plus and certified information systems security professional credentials and it's CISSP. Before coming to LCC in 2014, this star served in the Air Force and retired with the rank of Lieutenant colonel. He moved his family to the Mid Michigan area and he started to work at LCC. He said he worked for the military for 20 years and he moved his family 11 times. Wow, that's a lot going on right there. We're gonna talk about that. He says he's married to a fabulous bride cat and have two children. This star also has a radio podcast show here on LCC. It's named the Safety Plan. Are you guys ready to find out who's today's star? Today's star is Paul Schwartz.

Thank you.

Thank you. Yes. We're so happy to have you on here, Paul.

Well, thanks, Lisa. I'm happy to be here.

Well, I'm ready to jump right in. So I read a lot about you and it's interesting. That's one of the best part of doing this show is the themes that you get to learn about people. But right now I want you to tell me a little bit more about who you are and what's important to you in your life right now.

Oh wow. Geez. That's an open ended question. Here it is. It's important to me. Well, I guess, you know, family is super important at this point in my life. Cause I've got two young kids and so trying to be a good dad and father to them and husband to my wife. Very family focused and. Yeah. And then work wise. Hey guys. I'm here at LCC serving as a director of information security. So trying to keep the college protected as you mentioned earlier, and trying to keep healthy. And the Schwartz family line has a lot of heart attacks at that young age. So my job here and what's important to me is stay healthy and hopefully live a longer life than the hereditary line of the Schwartz family. So yeah, that's what's important to me.

Well, yeah, that sounds great. As far as putting your family first, putting your health first, making sure that you're here to take care of them and then doing what you love to do. I wonder how did you get to LCC? Like you retired. You could talk a little bit about that. Cause I'm really interested in your career before you got to LCC, some of the things that you did. But then why did you decide to come?

Yeah, so yeah, so at the 20 year point in the Air Force, we are living in Norfolk, Virginia and we had moved 11 times as you'd mentioned, in those 20 years. And so at that point my son had been in his fourth elementary school in four years and that was unsustainable and we didn't want them to go forward with that kind of non attachment. And so at 20 years, the earliest I could, I retired. And then because the government had picked where we were going to live for the last 11 moves, I asked my wife and said, hey, why don't you pick this time? And she has family up here in Michigan. So she said, hey, let's move up to Michigan. And so we moved to East Lansing. And after about six months of decompressing and watching a lot of mash and sitting on the couch and remodeling the house, my wife Kat said, hey Paul, it's nice that you're here, you know, but you're a bit much. You make noise, you smell, you want lunch, you talk to me. She's an introvert, I'm an extrovert. She wanted to be in her bubble. She's like, can you leave the house for a while? And I'm like, great, I'll go to the gym for two hours, I'll play basketball, I'll come back. And she's like, well, two hours isn't enough. I'm looking more at like eight hours. And I'm like, well, that sounds like a job. And so although I didn't want to go back to work, I finally said, all right, let's go back to work. So I looked around and applied at some jobs and the director of Information Security here was open at LCC. So I applied and got the job. And that's how I came to LCC eventually.

Wow, that's a great story. And I mean, after moving 11 times, I would be glad to settle down. And it's interesting how people come and they have second career. I'm not looking for that. But you know, it's interesting. I've met and talked to a lot of people at LCC that this is their second career. And to me that's like, you really love it because you could coming back here to work again. You love what you're doing. And so tell me a little bit about what your job is. Like, what do you do on a daily basis?

So I Director of Information Security, it's a bit of a firefighter, so there's lots of fires, but burning that I need to put out lots of problems to solve with the network and with technology. At LCC, there's lots of ways that criminals or hackers could exploit or hurt the college. And so my job is trying to coordinate mitigation or remediation or solutions to those problems. So we have. Phishing is a big attack vector for LCC. So that's when emails or texts or voicemail phone calls are sent to employees and they hand over their network credentials, which is your user username and your password. And then the criminals use that to do bad things to the network. So I do a lot of security awareness about what phishing is. I actually proactively phish the employees.

You do, because you got me one time, but I've learned so much from that. But I didn't mean to interrupt you, but go ahead.

I get a lot of the employees. They're not the only one. It's a bit of a game, I guess, to try and design a sophisticated fish to try and trick people into falling for it. But you know, there's a education piece to that of what the red flags are that you should be looking for when you open up emails. So there's security awareness side. There's also a vulnerability management. I scan the systems at LCC and see if there's any vulnerabilities and then patch those systems or apply mitigations we do data loss prevention, which is software on your computers that looks for Social Security numbers or credit card numbers. And if it finds it, we advise you on the appropriate place to store that information. We do governance, which is infosecurity policies and procedures, and we try and guide the college on where their important information is and where it should be stored and how to protect it. We do a lot of incident response. That's when we have criminals actually do bad things and we follow up and try and kick the criminals off the network and figure out how they got on the network and try and make sure they can't repeat that process again. Yeah, so every day seems to be really different because there's so many different facets of cybersecurity and so many different ways that the hackers could do damage to the college. So yeah, it's a pretty fun job in that it changes every day.

Well, I mean it sounds fun from someone who has that technical experience, but for someone who is just who struggle bust with technology, it always seems so difficult. But I really appreciate you and your department because I've become a lot more savvy with phishing and looking at my emails and making sure that the person that send me that makes sense and you know, looking at misspelled words and looking, you know, just looking for things that I didn't really think about before. And that carries on to my home computer when I get emails on my Yahoo, you know, looking at that. And so I do appreciate what you've done and I really think that you've made impact on our campus because, you know, like me, although we get caught, even though when you send it out, I'm looking for it too. Cause after you caught me that last time, I was like, oh no, he is not getting me again. And so every time you send out one, I think it is. So I'm like, okay, I'm gonna look and see this. This is not right. This is not right. And so it kind of makes me like, like you said, it's a game, but it's not a game. Cause it's serious and they can do a lot of damage. But I really wanted to get a chance to tell you I think that you made a big difference in how people look at cybersecurity here on our campus. And you give us good training material too. So I wanted to throw that out there too.

I appreciate that. I like the competition that you and I have. So now I'm gonna try.

You're gonna try to give me, I'm gonna try to up my name. I should have been quiet.

And I like how you're slowing down and looking at your email. Email, looking at that. Who's the sender? Do I recognize it? Although that could be spoofed. The second biggest thing is the links and the attachments. You can't be click.

Yeah, see, I don't click.

Everybody just clicks nonstop on everything.

You can't.

You gotta take a breather and go, wait, was I expecting an invoice for $1,000 of something I didn't even buy? Maybe I shouldn't open that. Because once you open up that link or that attachment to that email, it could immediately infect your computer with malware without any intervention on your own. So it's very dangerous to be click happy.

It is. No, and I. And I think I've learned that. And I think that that's one of the things that. I'll carry that with me. I'll carry what I've learned about network security, which is not much. But whatever you teach me, whatever we are trained on, I pay attention to it because I don't want to be the person that has somebody clicking on something. And what do you like most about what you do here at occ? I know you talk. You said so many things. But what's that one thing that if you had to say, this is something that I really enjoy, what would it be?

I think. Well, I think it's about my job and that it's a bit of a treasure hunt. There's clues that are provided, and you're following up on those and you're trying to unwrap the mystery or the treasure, trying to find the end of the puzzle. That's, I think, the best, maybe mentally intriguing part of my job that makes it the most fun.

Okay. Is there more? Like, how many people are in your department?

Yeah, so there's me and my info security analyst, and then we have an intern, and then we have a records manager. So it's three and a half people.

Okay. That's doing all that work. That's a lot to do. Well, I also wanted to ask you, like, what do you do outside of working at LCC? What's life like for you?

Yeah, so as I mentioned earlier, I've been, you know, married with kids, so that takes up 99% of the time. And I'm a homeowner, too, so that takes up the other 1%. Keeping the house running. I guess My interests are, as I mentioned, working out. I love playing basketball at lunch and the old guy leagues at the gym. I love sports. I'm thinking back to last weekend when we had all the college games all Saturday. I watched four games there and tailgated before the Michigan State game. Yeah. And just meeting up with friends, watching movies. My wife and I are watching a Netflix series right now called Alone. And she's a bit of a survivalist type mentality. And so the show Alone, they drop these strangers out in the middle of the forest and they see who can survive the longest. And some of them make it 80, 90 days before they pull them out because everybody else is tapped out.

Yeah, see, that would be my worst nightmare. I could never do that. I would probably be passed out the second or third day.

Yeah, I think so. I was in Boy Scouts growing up, and so we did a lot of survivalist things. And then the military, they teach you these skills also.

That's what I'm saying. Like military, you probably are good to go. This is, you know, how to take care of yourself if something happens. But in the Air Force, like you, you were a lieutenant colonel. How did, how did that trajectory go? Like, do you start out as an enlisted person? Did you start out as an officer?

Yeah. And so there's different routes. Like you're saying you could go in enlisted and then go through officer training school and then be. And become an officer. You could come out of high school and go right to a military academy like the Air Force Academy or West Point. The route I went was while in high school, I applied for a four year Air Force ROTC scholarship and won that. And so the government was paying for my four year degree in computer science. And then after I finished my degree, I owed the military. Four years as a second lieutenant and then you become a first lieutenant. So at the end of four years, you're a first lieutenant. And then it was so much fun. I had a blast. They had more tuition assistance programs, so I started to get my master's and I was doing traveling and, and working with great people. And they've got a great mission, a very patriarch mission in the military. And so at that point I'm like, I want to stay and keep going. So from that four years, I then became a captain and major and then retired eventually as a lieutenant colonel.

And you reenlist every four years on.

The officer side, once you do that initial obligation, you kind of incur like a mini obligation every time you move. And as an officer, they tend to move you like every two or three years. But you can get out as an officer at any point, really. It's Only on the enlisted side do they sign you up for like a block of years, like three to six years or so.

Okay, that's interesting. My daughter, I told you earlier, is thinking about the military. So I'm truly interested in like what's this aspect like or what's this branch like, so I appreciate you talking to me about that. Like. So I know you said that you're pretty busy with your family and your household maintenance and keeping yourself, you know, healthy and alive, but do you have any hobbies and how did you get into them if you do?

Yeah, I guess. Yeah, right, my hobbies. So I'm a super nerd. So I do enjoy tech. I do read up a lot of information on my field, which is cybersecurity, because it's changing and evolving and it's very much like what I compare it to is the wild, wild West. There really no rules and all types of craziness is going on. And once the criminals figure out a way to exploit or turn anything into money, they're just going to go down those rabbit holes. And so it's a bit of work to stay out in front of them and try and slow that down hobby wise. Besides information security and working out in sports. Yeah. Watching TV and hang out with friends.

Hey, that's a good one. You need to do enough. Sound like you're doing enough.

One thing I've learned though, over the years here and towards the later in life is it's not about me anymore. It's about my kids. And so the kids come first. And it's been a huge transition for me as maybe a selfish person, to put them first. And so when they have activities and, you know, sporting events or things they want to do on the weekends and so forth, it's definitely what I would. What I make a priority. And so that I guess takes precedence over maybe my hobbies and stuff I want to do.

Yeah, well, you have. You said a senior. Yeah. And a seventh grader. Right.

My senior is. My son Tate is already in 12th grade and time has flown by in a blink of an eye. And so that just lends more to the. It's not about me, it's about them. Because he'll be out of the house next year.

Yeah.

And then we'll just have my daughter left. My daughter Soleil, who's 12 now, and she'll be out.

It'll be quick, before you know it. And then you'll have to have a hobby. So you got to start thinking about that now. Cause they'll be Gone, living their lives.

I'm gonna turn the tables on you. I don't know if you have kids.

I do. I have a daughter. She's a senior too.

Oh, really?

She's at Everett and she's a drum major. And so she's gonna come to LCC. We talked about your son and he has, you know, he's applied to a lot of different, really great schools, so I wish him the best. Mikayla's coming to LCC because I feel like this environment here, the classroom sizes, and I still want her by me. And we get a great benefit working here, so I'm keeping her here while we can. But yeah, she's. I'm thinking about my life after her too. So I do private practice, so I may increase that a little bit more when she's gone. But yeah, it's exciting to be a parent. But I'm excited for her, this next phase as well.

I like that you mentioned the LCC benefit of. So as an employee here, the employees and their dependents can take classes for free at LCC. You just have to pay the fees. And I took advantage of that. It's such a great selling point of LCC. I took basketball classes, so I combined my workout with a class when I first got here, and it was great with Coach Ingram over at. Who's kind of a famous basketball coach here at LCC and a great mentor, and he has great knowledge of basketball. So this is super good to take advantage of the classes here.

Yeah, it is. And I'm not as. I need to do better. I need to do better, Paul, because I'm thinking, like, all the things that we get exposed to. Like I said, I have the best job because I'm around so many smart people. I got resource that I can just reach out and ask someone this or that and. And can get a pretty good information from those people. And everybody don't have access to folks like that. So I think that's pretty cool.

You mentioned that earlier about how big my team was and how much responsibility we have. And what you just said reminded me that I like to kid people that I'm a pretty boy frontman and maybe just our coordinator of things. But that is true. I rely on. There's over 100 people in the IT department here at LCC. And I rely on all of them to make sure that we have the best security posture set up to protect our users and our students here at LCC. So it's very important to kind of surround yourself by all these smart people. That helps you become successful.

Yep. And that's really a good perk for this job. To me, I wanted to ask you, like, what's something that you're really proud of and why?

Oh, geez. Yeah, I'm really proud of serving my country for 20 years. Not a lot of people have done that. And so there's great pride in, you know, hearing that national anthem or seeing what reminds me of it. That just happened the other day was we went to a football game and we had the flyover occur at the end of the national anthem with the jets and everything. And to the Air Force. When you hear that roar of the jets, it really. It puts a gleam in your eye and the Harrison stands up in the back of your neck and you really get a fire inside you. So it's, I guess maybe something I'm definitely proud of.

Oh, yeah. I mean, I think that's. You should be. I mean, not that I got a big opinion, but I do. I think that that's something because everybody's not cut out to do that, and everybody doesn't sacrifice, you know, like that.

So the second thing I'm most proud of is how well my wife and I have raised my son. Now, this is probably 99% my wife's work, and I'm only taking the accolades for it, but my son is a super. He stunts Super. He's 4.0 at East Lansing High School, and he does super well on his sat. And I swear he could get into any Ivy League school he wants to. But I can't believe if you look back at my childhood and way I grew up, I was like a barely a C student. And not really. I'm not a perfectionist. I'm more. Are the 80% good enough? And it's surprising how well he has turned out with me being kind of a bit of a mentor to him, which I don't see how that's possible that he's turned out so well.

Well, I have to disagree. I'm looking at someone with computer science, MBA going, you know, working towards doctorate. You have a lot of stuff going on. And I think that work ethic children see that.

And that's a big selling point of the military, which your daughter might be interested in, is the military throws all types of money. If you are interested in education, they will give you tuition assistance and the 911 bill and all types of other programs if you want to keep getting educated. So I went and got two masters and started my doctorate and got all these certifications. If you have a hunger to get educated. The military is a great place. They totally encourage you to keep improving your life that way.

Yeah, I'm definitely gonna. I'm proud of Mikaela for thinking that way. You know, four years I'm a single parent, and so we gotta figure out how to pay for college after LCC. And so her looking at resources other than my pocket and a loan or something like that, I appreciate that about her. So that's a good. Another benefit for the military. Well, I want to ask you. What's the most daring thing you've ever done?

Daring? Well, the only thing that's coming to my mind is I wanted to. I wanted to do something big when I retired from the military. And so I said, all right, I'm going to go. I'm going to jump out of an airplane and parachute down. And unfortunately. And I thought that was pretty crazy because I don't know many people have done that. So I thought that was pretty daring. So I got to the point of getting close to retirement, and unfortunately, I had been in this bicycle accident several years before that where, more or less, I was riding at night without a helmet, and I took a header into this big culvert and I broke my neck and my back in several places. And so anyway, fast forward two years until the retirement, and I'm like, I'm going to go jump off a plane. And my wife's says, oh, yeah, as soon as you can get a doctor to sign off on that. So me and my wife, we went to see the doctor, and I'm like, yeah, this is what I want to do. I want to jump out of a plane. And the doctor's like, no, no, I will never sign off on that. At the end of landing, a wind gust could toss you up and you could land on your head and be paralyzed and your life's over and whatnot. And so although you asked me the most daring thing, I think the most daring thing was asking the doctor if they would approve of me doing jumping off an airplane.

Um, yeah, no, I think after your accident, you need to sit tight, don't you?

Don't.

That's enough daring for you? Well, we are almost out of time, and I wanna ask you this question because. And it's nothing, it's silly, but because you aren't from Michigan. Right. I always want. And I ask lately, everybody, is it go green or go blue? What would you. What would you say?

Yeah, so as you. As you said, I'm from Iowa originally, and I went to school at Iowa State, and I moved 20 years in the military and then moved to Michigan. I've been here about eight years. So I think now I'm starting to transform into a true Michigander. And if you ask me, go blue or go go green. My wife went to University of Michigan and she has bought me all types of like Wolverine gear. So I would probably, probably say go blue. But I'm for kind of the big picture. I'm for a great game. I'm definitely a Michigan supporter. So I'm like, if either team wins when they play other opponents, I'm like, yeah, that's great. Okay, good for Michigan. But I think in the end if the head to head competition, I'm go blue.

Yeah, you don't really have much choice though, Paul. You know, if your wife graduated from U of M, you pretty much to keep the peace.

Yep, that's right.

You're probably a Wolverine fan and normally I have a problem with that, but I have to say, you don't have a choice, so. Right. I'm glad that you came on our show today and I think I've learned a lot. I want to encourage people to listen to your show on LTC Connect, the Safety Plan. I think that you will find out a lot of interesting things and I think I just learned that he does some fun stuff at the beginning. So if you get a chance to go and look on our podcast to kind of hear about his show, I think you will be pleasantly surprised as a. As I want to say thank you again, Paul for coming.

Yeah, thanks for having me.

Do you have any closing words?

Yeah, no. I like the teaser for the Safety plan if you. If you like 80s and 90s music, I do a little singing on my podcast, so.

Hey, that's worth you listening right there. So I want you guys to go ahead and listen to pa's podcast and I wanna thank you again for listening to Who's That Star? And I will talk to you soon.

Yeah, thanks.

You've been listening to Who's That Star? I'm Lisa A. and you can listen to this episode of Who's That Star and other shows from LCC Connect anytime online at LCCconnect.org. Thank you for listening. Catch me next time to find out Who's That Star.