< PreviousMeet Your VendorsCattcommWHO WE ARE:Cattcomm is a consulting and services company specializing in providing and deploying complete telecommunication solutions for small to mid-size organizations. We deliver high-quality consulting and engineering services quickly, confidently, and competently; allowing you to achieve your business goals. Whether it’s lowering overall operating expenses, expanding your network, or delivering the highest quality of feature-rich services to your end-user customers. We have the answer.OUR WORK WITH TRIBES:Over the last three years Cattcomm has worked with several Tribes on network and telecom initiatives. We have specifically worked closely with Salish Networks, a newly created subsidiary of the Tulalip Tribes, guiding the process of becoming a facilities based CLEC in Washington state. Upon deploying the infrastructure and turning on the switching platform, Salish immediately began recognizing monthly savings by reducing their own telecom costs. In the subsequent phases which are all underway, Salish is beginning to generate revenue by serving end users on the Reservation - next up is serving end users off the Reservation and ultimately the investment enables delivering wholesale services to other tribes. In a six month pilot that to wrapped up earlier this year, Salish has successfully delivered voice services to a Native partner on the other side of Washington state, 300 miles away, the Spokane Tribe. The Spokane Tribe will now be in position to save money by purchasing voice services for its own use, then services to tribal members and creating a new revenue stream. This work was the catalyst for forming Native Network, a spin off company dedicated to Tribal telecom and technology projects.Andrew MetcalfePresident/CEO509-661-2639metcalfe@cattcomm.comJenny RickelCOO509-661-5100jrickel@cattcomm.com“Cattcomm has truly been a wonderful asset to our company. They led us through the process of becoming our own Competitive Local Exchange Carrier, including business, financial, regulatory, Interconnection agreements, equipment selection, and network engineering.”-Travis Hill, Operations Manager, Salish Networks, subsidiary of Tulalip Telecom50TribalNetTelecommunication is the New 21st Century Trade RouteMeet Your VendorsSee us in Austin at the 16th Annual TribalNet Conference and get started!Daniel PirestaniCIO509-470-0854dpirestani@nativework.comSERVICES:Our first step with you is always to do a complimentary initial consultation. Through this process we will develop a scope of work and recommendation to accomplish your short and long-term technology goals. We also have resources to identify funding sources and formalize a strategy to help you get started. We have extensive experience with rural and under-served communities and the challenges that environment presents. By combining consulting, engineering, and operational experts to support you in achieving your technology goals, you will be able to measure the return on your investment. We can guide you through installation and service of telecom systems, help you deal with regulatory matters becoming an ETC or CLEC. We can even provide level 2 & 3 technical support.FAQ’s about the Native Network Initiative:Q: What is Native Network?A: Native Network is a three-part initiative that involves the construction of a nation-wide high performance telecommunications backbone network, to which a member tribe connects. The goal is to have this eventually become a completely member-owned and operated physical network that tribes can not only save money by being part of it, but also make money as well. Q: How can my tribe benefit by becoming a member of this physical member network?A: Native Network is being designed to connect tribal lands for commerce opportunities. The idea is to have a high speed and secure “highway” between tribal lands that will allow tribal entities to diversify their economy and create jobs. As an example, tribe A, who has made an investment in a switching platform can sell wholesale services cost effectively to tribe B. Both tribes get an immediate savings and get additional revenues to fund new technology-centric jobs.Q: What if our Tribe has already invested in infrastructure and/or connectivity? How can Native Network membership help?A: Great! As an early adopter of telecom offerings you might want to provide services over the network and become part of this nation to nation marketplace. Whether over the national backbone, or the web enabled platform, tribeXchange you will be part of enabling increased revenue streams and job creation in Indian Country.Q: What is tribeXchange?A: It is a commerce portal that is being developed with your needs in mind. You can be part of creating the road map for enabling nation to nation sales in a global marketplace. Whether you are a tribe that has a large plant that makes and distributes garbage bags, or a tribal member that makes blankets, all members can benefit from tapping into the tribeXchange.For more information on Native Network initiative, please visit us online at www.nativenetwork.com or contact Andrew or Jenny today!Contact Daniel to provide input on the tribeXchange development process and/or take our survey to enter to win an ipad http://nativenetwork.com/51Fall 2015See us in Austin at the 16th Annual TribalNet Conference and get started!Featured Columns - Threats & Risk ManagementAndy Jabbour, President, Gate 15“A terrorist attack won’t happen here.” “Hackers don’t care about our systems.” “We’re not in a major earthquake area.” “We’re not the target.” Wishful thinking is not an effective component of a risk management program, and it shouldn’t be a part of yours. To support organizational security and resilience, all organizations, governments and businesses of all sizes — should fol-low the basic risk management process of identifying, assessing, mitigating, and monitoring risks. That process facilitates organizations, including tribal communities, to reduce risk to acceptable levels. A key component of risk reduction is being prepared for incidents, to be able to maintain continuity of operations and be ready for changing conditions and disruptions that will inevitably occur. Often referred to as resilience, the ability to adapt to unexpected conditions, and withstand and rapidly recover from disruptions, can only be realized through proper preparedness activities.Largely due to the increasingly complex web and convergence of cyber and physical dependencies organizations have on one another, and the reality that no government or business operates in a silo but as part of a physical community and networked neighborhood, preparedness is dependent on the whole of community to be effective. Recognizing this, the U.S. government has developed a comprehensive system for national preparedness and a variety of grant programs to help resource critical needs to support preparedness and resilience. An effective approach to preparedness can be established by applying the U.S. Government defined “Preparedness Cycle – a key part of the National Incident Management System (NIMS).” NIMS is the U.S. Government-defined process, achieving a systematic and proactive approach to guide governments at all levels, nongovernmental organizations, and the private sector to collaborate in all-hazards incident management, “regardless of cause, size, location, or complexity—in order to reduce loss of life, property, and harm to the environment .” NIMS defines preparedness as “a continuous cycle of planning, organizing, training, equipping, exercising, evaluating, and taking corrective action in an effort to ensure effective coordination during incident response .” A key factor in effective implementation of the preparedness cycle is the operational progression of planning, training, and exercising. With evaluation and improvement, the cycle continues and organizations are able to adapt to new threats, conditions, and other variables.Planning is a foundational (but continuous!) step. As risks are identified, organizations should develop plans, procedures, and processes to establish systematic, understandable, and repeatable approaches to operations – particularly with consideration to threats and associated risks. Plans are critical, but on their own, do little more than collect dust on a shelf (or these days, take up space in the cloud). For plans to be effective, personnel must be trained and practiced in applying those plans, and able to follow them in routine daily and incident situations. So, with a good plan and a trained staff, we should be all set! Oh hardly. A trained staff or process needs to be exercised. When put to the test and validated, exercises can identify gaps and areas that may require additional planning, training, equipment or, in some cases, wholly new approaches as the threat environment changes. And in our current cyber-dependent environment, threats and associated risks change at an increasingly fast and complex rate. Preparedness: A Key Component of Effective Risk ManagementAndy JabbourPresidentGate 15Figure 1: National Preparedness Cycle (http://www.fema.gov/national-preparedness-cycle)52TribalNetFeatured Columns - Threats & Risk ManagementTo support a common approach and flexible process of preparedness exercises, the U.S. Government has established a deliberate methodology known as the Homeland Security Exercise and Evaluation Program (HSEEP). HSEEP provides a set of guiding principles and structure to exercise progression and is effective across the full spectrum of operational mission areas; prevention, protection, mitigation, response, and recovery. HSEEP exercises include discussion-based activities that can help inform plans and procedures development, and tabletop exercises (TTXs) to test those plans, as well as more complex operational exercises like drills, functional and full-scale exercises. Most exercises culminate in the development of post-exercise “After Action Reports” (AARs) that can support the conduct of more challenging exercises and inform the next turn of the preparedness cycle as organizations further refine and improve plans and procedures. Additionally, post-exercise AARs can be used to justify grant requests when communities, including tribes, seek assistance to fund a gap in preparedness. The U.S. Government has a number of grants that tribes can apply for directly (such as the Tribal Homeland Security Grant Program [THSGP], Port Security Grant Program [PSGP], and Fire Grants ), as well as grants that tribes can pursue as sub-recipients from a state, including the Emergency Management Performance Grant (EMPG) and the Homeland Security Grant Program (HSGP). In a world where there are never enough resources available for security, grants can assist tribal preparedness and enhance organizational security and resilience. As organizations conduct risk assessments, exercises and AARs can help support the identification, assessment, mitigation, and reporting of risks, playing a critical role in risk reduction. Exercises can help organizations in numerous ways such as: informing plans and process development and refinement; identifying equipment, facility, personnel, and process gaps; highlighting additional training needs; or illuminating areas that had not before been considered; as well as supporting more complex exercise activities that can further challenge and prepare organizations; and numerous other areas. In a world of both simple and very complex threats spanning across the all-hazards environment, organizations of all forms, including the tribal community, must invest the necessary time and resources into preparedness activities as part of a broader and more holistic approach to achieving an acceptable level of risk.Andy leads a variety of preparedness, analysis, and operational activities, presently leading Gate 15’s support to the Real Estate and Financial Services ISACs. Prior to founding Gate 15, Andy served in a variety of roles including support to DHS exercises and incident response and worldwide assignment in the US Army.Fall 2015Product SpotlightGridstore’s HyperConverged Appliances (HCA) are purpose-built for the Microsoft Cloud-Inspired Data Center. The HCA brings together compute, SAN, and storage into a single system that offers all-flash bare-metal performance, efficient scaling, and scale-to-fit design that eliminates costly compute sprawl. Customers achieve a 10X performance increase with 75% less infrastructure delivering 4X decrease in TCO. The Gridstore HyperConverged Appliance is an ideal platform for infrastructure refreshes and specific Windows workloads such as VDI, SQL Server, Dev/Test, and ROBO.Gridstore’s HyperConverged Infrastructure supports Windows Azure Pack, enabling deployment of Private-Cloud-in-a-Box easily and cost-effectively. Azure Pack provides a multi-tenant, self-service private cloud interface that works with Windows Server and System Center, to deliver self-service provisioning, easy movement of workloads to the cloud, and infrastructure management. Additionally, Gridstore’s integration with System Center includes VMM for policy-based provisioning and orchestration of compute and storage resources at VM-level granularity. Value to the Native American Market:Gridstore is able to provide our tribal customers with the ability to easily deploy a private cloud that is well suited to supporting the administrative needs of running reservation infrastructure. This includes workloads typical to municipality needs, like Microsoft Exchange, SQL databases, file servers, and Sharepoint. The Gridstore solution can start small and expand as needed to support growth and incremental demands on the IT infrastructure of the tribe.Who We AreGridstore™ is the leader in HyperConverged All-Flash Infrastructure for the Microsoft Cloud-Inspired Data Center. Our customers gain a 10X performance improvement over traditional storage as we put all-flash as close to the workload as possible. They realize 4X lower TCO by consolidation of three layers of infrastructure into one built on X86 hardware, and 10X less management effort due to less management points and less infrastructure to manage. Gridstore’s HyperConverged Appliances (HCA) include both compute and storage in a single system with the flexibility for nodes being compute and storage or storage only and can scale from a minimum of three nodes to 256. Gridstore’s patented software architecture delivers native Windows integration, per-VM I/O control, and elastic and independent scaling of resources. The Gridstore HCA is an ideal platform for infrastructure refreshes and specific Windows workloads such as VDI, SQL Server, Private Cloud, and ROBO. Gridstore is headquartered in Mountain View, CA. and its products and services are available through a global network of value-added resellers.Gridstore is a Microsoft Gold OEM and Gold Data Center Partner, a member of the Microsoft Enterprise Cloud Alliance and Certified in the Microsoft Private Cloud Fast Track Program.References of Where Installed:Yavapai-Prescott Indian TribeConfederated Tribes of Grand Ronde OregonSouthern UTE Indian Tribe Durango ColoradoCompanyGridstoreSales Contact North American Salessales@gridstore.com 650-316-5515 Gridstore HyperConverged ApplianceGRIDSTORE IS A PROUD MICROSOFT PARTNER54TribalNetwww.gridstore.comYou can save over 70% on your Cisco SMARTnet Maintenance renewal by switching to TDS-NetSupport!Save big while keeping peace of mindGet full hardware replacement in up to 4 hrs, IOS updates and 24x7x365 support while cutting your annual maintenance costs in half. Extend End-of-LifeDon’t let Cisco push you into upgrading old equipment that’s still meeting your needs. TDS-NetSupport provides full support for previous generation and end-of-life equipment.Full money back guaranteeOnce you renew your Cisco SMARTnet contract theres no turning back. TDS-NetSupport provides a full money back guarantee for any remaining months of your contract. No questions askedContact Tredent Data Systems today to get a FREE quote on your Cisco maintenance and see how much you can save!!!Charles BeckVice President, Sales p. 805.716.8120 | f. 805.375.4912charlesb@tredent.comwww.tredent.com/TDS-Net-comparisonIs your Cisco SMARTnetMaintenance Renewal breaking the bank?Product SpotlightGhostSentry is a powerful compliance tool, offering tribal casinos a layer of security over sensitive information, control of remote access, and automated reporting to meet compliance regulations.GhostSentry acts as a barrier between internal casino servers and remote vendor users. With mobile capability, the casino administrator has the ability to quickly and easily approve or disapprove access from anywhere. Perhaps the most important distinguishing feature of GhostSentry, however, is its ability to log all remote access and report it in a “Remote Access Log.” This Remote Access Log provides tribal casinos with up-to-date remote access records, presented in a way to ensure immediate, effortless compliance with MICS requirements.Value to the Native American Market:The GhostSentry platform was developed by a team of Finley & Cook professionals seeking a remote access solution that both secured tribal casino servers and provided remote access records in a manner compliant with the MICS. This development team has over 25 years of experience in IT security, audit, and accounting, tribal gaming, and MICS compliance.• Security – Provides a secure barrier, halting all unauthorized access to tribal casino servers• Compliance – Allows for the management of remote access to Casino servers, while providing suf-ficient reporting to maintain MICS compliance.• Efficiency – An out-of-the-box solution that streamlines the remote access process, allowing the administrator to approve or disapprove access at the click of a button while avoiding the need to manually record all access.Who We AreFinley & Cook is an accounting and consulting firm that has been serving tribal governments for over three decades. During that time, we have worked with over 110 tribes, serving clients in 36 states. We specialize in outsourced accounting, tribal financial assessments, audit preparation, compliance reporting, business consulting, customized trainings, and Microsoft Dynamics software solutions.References of Where Installed:• The Black Hawk Casino, owned & operated by the Sac & Fox Nation of Oklahoma• Cimarron Casino, Ioway Casino, & Iowa Travel Plaza, owned & operated by the Iowa Tribe of Oklahoma• Golden Pony Casino, owned & operated by the Thlopthlocco Tribal Town• Sugar Creek Casino, owned & operated by the Wichita Tribe & Affiliates• Prairie Wind Casino & East Wind Casino, owned & operated by the Oglala Sioux TribeCompanyFinley & CookSales Contact Rachel Loudon Compliance Manager 405-878-7303 rachell@finley-cook.com GhostSentryFor more information on the solutions offered by Finley & Cook, visit our website at www.finley-cook.comGhostSentryYour Key to Remote Access Control56TribalNet What’s New TribalNet?2015201516th Annual Conference11/2/15-11/5/15This year’s conference will be held in the sunny, fun and vibrant city of Austin, TXOnline registration for this year’s conference is open - why wait? REGISTER TODAY MagazineWe are always adding new advertisers, writers and contributors to each issue. Would you like to be one of them? Let us know! Connect with us and tell us what you thought of this issue! info@tribalnetonline.com The NATRC membership is growing and that means MORE RESEARCH TOPICS! See what’s coming up for NATRC members in 2015:• RPMS/Resource & Patient Management Systems• Asset & Facilities Management Systems• Prepare for HIPPA Compliance Audit• Emergency Services Management SystemsIf you aren’t a member today- take a tour to find out more at: http://www.tribalnetonline.com/natrc/The TribalNet Conference App will be available SOON for download! Use it onsite as a tool to stay informed and engaged, participate in our leaderboard to try for VIP status! Stay tuned for more details.NATRCConference Appwww.tribalnetonline.comStay Informed…Stay ConnectedMagazineFall 2 15TribalNetPRESORTED STDUS POSTAGEPAIDFARGO, NDPERMIT #684Tribal Government - Tribal Health - Gaming & Non-Gaming Tribal EnterprisesJOIN TRIBALNET ON SOCIAL MEDIAFeatured Columns - CommunicationChristopher Luter, Division Director of IT, Forest County Potawatomi CommunityAD, API, DBMS, HA, vDSL, DNS, SAN, IVR, LDAP, Mbps, NAS, Raid, PPPoE, SaaS, VPN, SIP and Wi-Fi … our profession is filled with acronyms!Most of us in technology can read the list above and have a strong mental image regarding the purpose of each. We talk in IT using these terms as part of our vernacular and it is not an issue.Unfortunately, many of us have walked into executive meetings or sat in meetings with our customers freely using them, as well. We use these acronyms and other technological terminology without thought, and they are but one of the many ways we oftentimes fail to communicate our message successfully. Communication is consistently identified as the problem, or at least as a part of the problem, that people face when interacting with others. It seems so easy at first blush, but it is really one of the most challenging things we do and often we do it with little or no thought. The sad result – diluted or mixed messages, critical points missed and often, frustrated teammates and peers.Communication is a complex and interactive process; it can create connection or cause separation, it can defuse stress or create it. Communication can stop blame-seeking behaviors and allow effective analysis of problems leading to resolution. Communication can create, improve and even heal teams while driving better, faster decision making processes. Communication is filled with verbal and non-verbal cues. Subtle clues like sentence structure or whether an email is to you or if you are copied on it can completely shift how the message is received.Communication is a skill that must be developed and which only improves with practice, feedback, and self-reflection. We often don’t think about it but communication in a work environment really has three key components — speaking, listening, and preparation.Speaking seems easy, we do it all day. But when speaking in a work environment you need to be aware of your audience. Something I stress within my teams is that words have meaning. Using the right words in the right context is imperative to your success in communicating. You need to be aware of your surroundings, the person(s) you want to receive your message, and how you speak so that you deliver the message in a way that the receiver is prepared to understand and consume. For example, if you’re talking with someone who’s not particularly tech savvy, using technological acronyms to diagnose the problem with them may not get you to the root of the problem. Which begs the question, are you really serving your customer?Communication is the responsibility of the communicator. As the person who is delivering the message, I’m responsible for ensuring my audience understands my intent, my next steps and my reasoning, regardless of whether or not they agree with what I’m saying. However, my audience, be it one person or 100, has a responsibility, as well, to ensure they understand the message. We as listeners have an obligation to seek clarity as part of the communication process. Think back on your own personal experiences. You may remember a time where you felt someone was speaking just to hear themselves talk or to ensure everyone in the room knew they were the smartest person there. Don’t be that professional. Step back, be patient and speak so you deliver a concise and audience-appropriate message. Step back, be patient. It sounds so easy. The reality is nearly everyone struggles with this. What we are talking about, though, is listening. Listening is actually one of the most powerful ways you can communicate. Listening is where almost all communication comes apart. Too often we don’t actively listen to the other party, often because we’re already formulating our response to what we perceive is being communicated to us. Not listening is where the seed of misunderstanding Communication, it can make us, but more often than not, it can break us58TribalNetChristopher LuterDivision Director of ITForest County Potawatomi Community“Big or small, we start fixing stuff before we have really listened to our customer. And the trouble begins.” Featured Columns - Communicationis sown. We don’t ask questions, we don’t clarify and, too often, for this simple reason we fail to develop true understanding. Listening and speaking are clear and logical components of communication. As discussed in the beginning though, preparation before we speak is a must. This seems like it should be easy, but it is incredibly challenging to do this effectively as an IT person. By nature, we want to fix the problem so off we go to problem solve – more often than not, without knowing the entire issue!Oftentimes, as IT professionals, we are communicating with our customer or our leaders as we work to solve business problems. So we half listen. We are developing the solution in our head before the communicator has fully described the issue because we know what it is and we have the solution. Big or small, we start fixing stuff before we have really listened to our customer. And the trouble begins.Try this … next time you come across a problem in a process or a procedure with your customer or you have a computer software or network not working properly, step back for a moment. As your customer or peer describes the challenge they are facing, draw it up on a whiteboard, workflow it, take it apart and examine it with them visually. Try to have them describe the issue, desire or problem to you so that you can actually draw it. Then verify what you’ve drawn is indeed the problem they are communicating. You’ll find as you draw out these challenges in what will feel like an interactive game of charades, you will begin to interact with your customers and your peers differently. The issues you will notice as you whiteboard them will take on new parameters that weren’t in the initial communication and you’ll start to change your communication behaviors and improve your success.As you become more adept, start looking into more advanced topics such as value stream mapping and business process mapping, and you may begin to realize true success in technology actually ties to being an exceptionally skilled communicator.Communication isn’t that hard, but it isn’t that easy either. Communication is a skill and it takes work and dedication to master it.Fall 2015www.FireEye.com© 2015 FireEye, Inc. All rights reserved. FireEye is a registered trademark of FireEye, Inc. All other brands, products, or service names may be trademarks or service marks of their respective owners.ONE UNIFIED DEFENSEAGAINST CYBER ATTACKERSDETECTSignature-less and multi-flow virtual machine based approach that leverages superior threat intelligencePREVENTMulti-vector inline known and unknown threat preventionANALYZEContainment, forensics investigation and kill chain reconstructionRESPONDRemediation support and threat intelligence to recover and improve risk postureToday’s cyber attacks are targeted, sophisticated and focused on acquiring your most sensitive information. They also go undetected by traditional security technology. Government agencies and organizations need to reimagine security and adopt a Continuous Threat Protection model. This means having the ability to detect threats in real-time and reduce time to respond, thereby preventing or minimizing business impact. The FireEye Platform provides a multi-faceted approach to security – detect, prevent, analyze, respond. Scan the code to learn more.Christopher Luter, division director of information technologies, leads technology operations for the government and administration components of the Forest County Potawatomi Community. Christopher has a diverse background in both business and technology operations. His career leading technology operations has spanned numerous business verticals from government to construction and biotech to manufacturing. Christopher has lead teams which have received industry recognition for innovation, value creation through strategic application of technology and execution of leading edge thought of industry specific solutions.Next >