Advanced Communications and Information Technology - Joint
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The meeting was called to order by Senator Ricky Hill, who then handed control to Representative Stephen Meeks to outline the agenda and an upcoming closed session for a cyber-security briefing [13,15].
Meeks explained that the closed session (item e) would let the chief cyber-security officer report on state cyber-breaches without exposing vulnerabilities [15-16].
He announced that this would be his final meeting as chair of the House Technology Committee after ten years, reflecting on missed opportunities in broadband expansion, a delayed NASA lunar-base partnership, and the need to embrace artificial intelligence [17-27].
Meeks also proposed creating a dedicated innovation officer to drive AI adoption and prevent the state from falling behind other jurisdictions [26-27].
Senator Hill moved to approve the minutes from the August 26 2026 meeting, which passed unanimously [30-31].
State Broadband Director Glenn Howie reported that over 400,000 homes and businesses-about one-third of Arkansans-are slated to receive modern broadband this decade [34-35].
Since its 2019 inception, the Broadband Office has awarded $826 million in grants for 298 projects covering more than 205,000 locations, with 167 projects already completed serving roughly 124,000 sites [36-38].
The latest BEAD program will fund 210 projects reaching 77,000 locations with $300 million, achieving 99 % of eligible sites receiving competitive bids and directing 67 % of funds to Arkansas-based companies [40-44].
Statewide connectivity rose from 73.1 % in June 2022 to over 90 % by December 2025-a 24 % increase-and the agency highlighted new transparency tools such as an interactive broadband map and real-time construction dashboards [51-52,56-68].
Palo Alto Networks’ Michael Gregg briefed the committee on emerging AI-driven cyber threats, emphasizing AI as a force multiplier, identity-based attacks, and supply-chain risks, and urged the state to develop safeguards and education around AI use [120-143].
He warned that fake-identity attacks are growing and that third-party supply-chain vulnerabilities-up 3.8 % and now accounting for 23 % of cases-are being exploited by nation-state actors targeting weak defaults in critical infrastructure such as water and pipeline systems [144-149].
Gregg explained that frontier AI models now let threat actors develop and launch fully automated attacks within 24 hours, collapsing the historic two-year lag between vulnerability discovery and exploitation [150-152].
Breach statistics showed roughly 50 % of organizations suffer a breach each year, with an average disruption of 241 days and a $4.4 million cost, while entities that employ AI for defense reduce losses by about $2 million [154-155].
He argued that accumulating dozens of security tools is inefficient and advocated consolidating into integrated platforms that combine AI with a human-in-the-loop approach to lower overhead and prevent analyst burnout [156-158].
Drawing on his state CISO experience, he demonstrated that such consolidation and AI cut mean-time-to-respond from over 10 hours to 55 minutes and reduced phishing response time by 97 percent, extending analyst tenure from roughly 14 months to more than 40 months [160-162].
Representatives Meeks and Richmond asked how states can become leaders, emphasizing AI-driven proactive defense, the difficulty of attribution, and the importance of basic hygiene such as changing default credentials [165-170, 182-186].
Gregg recommended AI-awareness training, analogous to phishing training, to prevent misuse of generative AI by employees [175-176].
Mary Ann Mines introduced herself as founder of Secure Energy and described Arkansas’s supportive ecosystem-including venture centers, SBA matchmaking events, and federal grant programs-that enables cyber-energy innovation and micro-grid resilience [206-224].
The committee then moved to a brief recess after a motion was seconded and approved [229-231].
Machine transcript
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Senator Ricky Hill
Unverified
3:45
Now we'll call a meeting to order OK. Mitdy's called to order. I'm gonna turn the meeting right over to to Representative meeks and he is going to explain to us the the closed proceed the closed process is being we have a little bit later on that does not mean it's right now and then
Representative Stephen Meeks
Unverified
4:06
we'll get started with the beginning of the meeting. thank you Mr Chairman. So, pursuant to Ac489 of2025 when
we get to item E that is going to be a
closed session. we passed this in order to allow our chief cybersecurity officer to give us updates on any cyber breaches that have taken place in the state over the last year. and allows us to become informed what was done how those were handled without letting the bad guys know where all of our vulnerabilities are at. So when we after we finished with dee we're actually going to have a cyberxx visit with us for a few minutes and then we
will recess and then upon that recess we'll ask all the members of the public and those that are not legislators or staff to please exit the room at that time. Yes, yeah during the recess before we move on, colleagues this is quite likely my last meeting as your chairman after 1010 years being the chair of the House Technologyittee we might try to squeeze in one more but it will be off site so this
will be our last meeting here that I will get to be your chair and so I'd like to share just a few closing thoughts while anybody still cares what I have to say about these topics and then then we'll we'll move on to the to the meeting and I want to speak about missed opportunities when I took over this committee back in 2015, 1 of the goals that was given to me was to get broadband throughout the state and it was something that I worked on for several years and eventually we came up with
sort of a plan to try to begin investing in broadband at that time. but unfortunately my senate co-chair at the time who's no longer in the senate basically threw me under the bus. we missed that opportunity and so as a state we did nothing until COVId hit. and then when COVID hit it became an emergency and I was in a meeting with governor Hutchinson and he asked me how much do we need to invest in this and I told him $100 million and that was our first investment but we missed the opportunity to begin working on that sooner it
wasn't until we had an emergency that it became you know, important enough for for enough people to care about it last month many of you were here but I spent three months working with Congressman Hill's office trying to have NASA representatives come to our state and share with us the ambitions to build the lunar base and NASA's looking to invest billions and billions of dollars and obviously those dollars are going to be spent here on earth and looking for
businesses here, you know, people to build pumps and sensors and you know things that we can do here in Arkansas and you know I went over to the Arkansas chamber and told them, you know, hey there's an opportunity here for our state and you know they had little to no interest in it. Thankfully the LittleRock chamber picked up the ball when we held the meeting, many of you were here last month only one TV station cared enough to be here about about that it's a it was an opportunity for us to grow jobs in our state and to
inspire the next generation and we missed that opportunity I believe. and now we're looking at AI going into the future this last august I had a chance to attend AI4, the largest AI conference in North America. There were 13,000 people there from 100 different countries. I actually encourage some of our executive agencies to come and attend. there were over300 AI vendors there and I spent a lot of my time visiting with those
vendors to find out where's the technology going where are the opportunities for us and a lot of them told me that they would be interested in coming to Arkansas that visiting with us sharing what they were doing I actually had one guy told me that you know you guys are from Arkansas you need to be over here talking to these folks that are in California and some of these because they're tired of all the junk that's going on there and they're looking for places to move and relocate. but I was the only one from Arkansas that was there and as much as I would love to offer
them economic incentives to come to our state that's not my position so again it was another opportunity from our state that was missed. I set up that 2036 commission to celebrate our state's 200th birthday. I'm sure they'll do good things but I want them to do something great will they take it you know hopefully they will they'll prove me wrong but will something great come from that we'll see you know lastly one of
the guys at the conference said this if your state is not implementing AI you're doing a disservice to your citizens it's not about replacing our employees. there's a lot of fear there that is not what the purpose of AI is. The purpose of the AI is to allow the computers to do the computer work so that the people can interact with the people so that our our employees can be a lot more productive and we have a once in a generational opportunity here to take advantage of this
technology but I'm afraid what's going to happen is if we continue down and do like we've always done as a state we're going to be lackadaisical about it we're not going to put forward the effort and instead of being a leader in this area which because we're smaller we can be a lot more flexible than our larger cousins that we're going to look back and because we didn't put the effort, we didn't put the time into it that we're going to end up being last again and I don't want that to happen
for our state when we have such a wonderful opportunity and it takes somebody who's willing to be that point person who's willing to get excited who's willing to continue who's willing to push and I don't know maybe we need to put you know maybe we need to create a position an innovation officer who's going to be that person who's going to push this push this push this because unfortunately what happens we all know you get busy in the everyday things of life and it's easy to push these opportunities to the side because it's not an emergency. It doesn't need to be
done today and we keep missing these opportunities and so again I know I'm rambling here but and I don't know that this is directed to any but we as a state have an opportunity here and my hope is is that as we go forward to encourage you don't miss this opportunity. make sure you keep pushing, pushing, pushing, pushing to take advantage of this opportunity that's being presented with some of these AI technologies because if not we'll want to be we'll be in the
bottom 10 states again and asking ourselves why when we could have been in the top 10 so with that again colleagues, if this is our last meeting, it's been an honor serving with you. I think we have gotten some great things done and hopefully my challenge to you we encourage you to continue to be that push so that we can be in one of the top 10 states is this technology involves and not a bottom 10 state. So with that, I will turn it back over to Senator Hill. Thank you Representative meeks
Senator Ricky Hill
Unverified
11:35
Well since this is a technology meeting I just want you to know things happen with technology colleagues if you would notice if you hit your documents on your little computer there they're not loaded and so we're gonna go old school today since it's representative meek's last meeting and we're going to use our paper OK? that's right and so moving right on so you use your paper documents today colleagues and we'll we'll go right on. we need a
consideration to approve the minutes from the August twenty6th,2026 meeting. everyone has a copy of that do we have a motion or any questions we got a motion yeah we got it right here we have a most of by representative Richardson and a second by Representative meeks all those in favor all those pollme sign most passed minutes are approved OK we're going to move right on
to item C the update on the Arkansas broadband office Mr Glenn howie if you'd come forward and introduce yourself for the record right good afternoon Glenn howie state broadband
Speaker 47
13:01
director. go right ahead sir OK appreciate it Mr Chairman and Representative meeks thank you for your service to the state your chairmanship it's been a
pleasure to prevent present before this committee multiple times. So today we'll look at a at an update on broadband development across the state Quick agenda I'll try to get through this relatively quickly for everyone but first in case there are any new members that perhaps are are seeing me or hearing me for the first time or knew to the general assembly since our last update. we'll have one slide on the state broadband office we'll talk about that briefly and we'll look at a brief
history of the grant programs here in the state take a quick snapshot of the current state of connectivity we'll talk briefly about transparency and communication and of course as you are all well free to to fire away and ask questions whenever you want. I have a dedicated Q&A portion here at the end a quick did you know before we get started this is a stat that that I and our team worked hard on to mine the data on this and I think it's a great statistic that you can take on the road with you
that over the course of this decade from 2020 to2030 over40re0,0an0 homes and businesses in the state of Arkansas which represents more than 1 million Arkansans, OK, so more than one third of our population will gain access to modern broadband speeds for the first time. over the course of this decade. it's a great it's a great did you know statistic as you are out on the road Again, quick recall for any of you that may be unfamiliar our team in our office ispresentative meeks a highlight
at the opening established in 2019 and in 2020 the first funds started to flow through our office both at the state allocation and then federal dollars as a result of the COVID pandemic we have when we're fully staffed we have 8 full-time staff positions on our team which I'll note to date all federally funded OK so our office is fully federally funded does not impact state appropriations since the establishment of the office we've awarded over $800 million
in grants 826 to be exact covering 298 projects across the state accounting for over 205,000 homes and businesses of those 167 projects have been completed to date covering 124,000 so we're almost at the 125,000 location mark as a result of the efforts of the state this body and our office and for that everyone should be very very very proud. OK so quick look the history of the grant programs to date
you'll notice these are screenshots from some of our dashboards that are all publicly available and you'll note we kind of they look better as the years go by so you'll see improvement in these dashboards as we move forward so round one I funded both through state again appropriations and CARS Act funding back in 2020 and2021, se76 projects out of round one again 122 million total completed several years ago round two of funding for the state this was through state and
local local fiscal recovery funds or slur funds out of the American out of arpa right? as you would know at 86 projects there out of round 2 $278 million in allocation this is back in 2021 and early 2022.gain these as for words are all publicly available round3 capital projects fund orcPF again a second bucket out of the ArRpa program 19 projects there,126 million dollars allocation to date75%
completed on those projects very excited and we have a June30th next year deadline by US Treasury to have those projects completed. quick updates here in in our capabilities on the dashboard side of things so this represents our fourth round of funding as a state the broadband eququityccess and deployment programme or bead program this particular funding round you have 210 projects covering over77,000 locations for300
million dollars in grant funding there now on these projects we expect shovels in the ground on the first of these projects by the end either right before the end of the year or early right after the new year on these particular projects across the state and the second and last did you know of the presentation today that the bead program the300 million dollars here for broadband deployment represents the single largest investment in broadband infrastructure in Arkansas's history.
a couple of slides about the bead program which again is our fourth funding round here in the state. I want to lead off with it it was a highly highly competitive grant program we received730 applications from33 different providers to cover those77,000 locations that were eligible of those 99%. ty9% of all the eligible locations in the state received bids from two or more internet service providers so highly competitive in the design and the way that we did that and I
think a testament to Arkansas's program to date is that again this was the fourth funding round so we've been able to learn and improve over the course of these different years and these different funding rounds sort of give us an edge over our state our peer states and our competitors in the region because we've been so active in this process every location in the state and the beat program received an average of3.1 applications so again highly competitive, highly competitive program. Quick summary here of the data we just talked730
applications from33 ISPs to cover to those77,000 locations. I do want to note you know in the program we have homes we have businesses but we also have community anchor institutions so we think about any police stations perhaps out there that that lacked connectivity.li stations, libraries so forth as far as I am aware we are the only state in the country that can say that we had a grant award for 100%. of our location. so every location is that we're eligible for the program received a grant award and as far as I'm aware I think we're the only state in the country that can make that
claim again just shy of300 million dollars in grant funds for that round I want to note more than $200 million of that is is granted to Arkansasbased companies so if we think about economic development and job growth and businesses for our people that's a fantastic statistic that over67% of our funding is dedicated to Arkansasbased companies. 380 $0 average grant award per location I do want to say that this particular grant round that we just ran has a technology neutral kind of approach we
had76% of our locations in Arkansas get awarded to fiber technology 16% of our locations awarded to Leo satellite7% licensed fixed wireless and 1% if a hybrid fiber coxxx wo more slides on beat and then we'll talk about the current state of connectivity which I know that you're all wanting to to hear about. So timeline here the federal government US Department of Commerce through NT and NTIA has approved all of our plans ALC has granted a
web pier NALC granted appropriation approval for the fourth round of funding we've executed grant agreements with all 14 ISPs in the program and then again both our our environmental reviews that have to take place and we think construction will start either end of this year early next year Quick note and last slide on the beat program earlier this month NTIA who again is the federal agency responsible for the program at the federal level I did release some additional
guidance and so they put out a policy notice to include additional locations into the bead program and really the goal here is to connect additional locations that fall into three categories one locations that have been defaulted OK by other providers and other federal grant programs for instance ones that we are not responsible for right so you have some providers really across the country that have been a part of other perhaps FCC programs that have defaulted on their projects we want to try to bring those in the program if we can. Uh2 locations that have
been added since the map was finalized so you have new builds right new homes that go up all the time in Arkansas and if they're on the most recent map that's available to us we want to add those in to the program and then lastly there was a challenge process that was a part of when we kicked the program off one of the challenges that could have been made was a provider would say hey you know we're gonna build to that house in6 months so you shouldn't fund it with the grant we're going to do that if any of those providers did not fulfill their commitments we're going to bring those locations back into the program so we expect somewhere between
12 and 16,000 additional locations with a NTI will also give us a cost cap of what we can spend
Speaker 52
22:07
to cover those locations we expect it to be somewhere between 46 and61 million. yes sir oh ok saw the lights
Speaker 47
22:15
it wasn't I wasn't sure so what does all that mean? right a lot of data, lot of maps. what does that mean for the current state of connectivity across Arkansas? Well, there's about and and shelby probably can fact check me on this about 1.36 million locations in Arkansas
homemes businesses and again community anchor institutions if you can see it it's a little small we did some data tracking from June of 2022 through December of last year in June 2022, we had a se3.1% sort of connectivity rate if you look at what the federal government defines as broadband speed. so again in June of 2022 Arkansas was at a 73.1% connectivity rate as of December last year we're at 90 we're over 90% now. that's a 24% increase in
broadband connectivity across Arkansas over the last three years. So again Arkansas has much much to be proud of Quickly on on transparency and communication
Speaker 60
23:13
you know we think we pride ourselves on our team as being very open and transparent both with
Speaker 47
23:19
with the general assembly our providers and our stakeholders across the country we do many many forms of outreach. you guys have seen some of you have been at some of the town halls that we'll do every fourth
Friday of the month we have that legislative update window where we get on a virtual call and are available with office hours and many of you have have come to those we do them for you we do them for the county judges we do them for the mayors we do that every month we've done town halls across the state which has said we have a weekly ISP calls with our providers that we've done for years now where they're able to ask questions and get the latest updates again a host of things that we do we think that we truly are the most communicative and most transparent office in the country and if you feel like if
you ever feel like we're not let me know. OK? Reach out to me personally and we'll get that corrected. Quickly this is a screenshot of the Arkansas State broadband map it's publicly available on our website again the most detailed map about broadband at the location level in our state's history we also know as a as a form of communication we need to do better and and get out videos and always continue to iterate on how we communicate so briefly I'll show a quick
video that our team has produced that we hope to go public with in the next
Speaker 65
24:46
couple of weeks have you ever wondered who your internet providers are or whether your home is part of a federal broadband grant program. The ARnect broadband map can help you answer both questions in just a few clicks. You can explore broadband availability throughout your community. Compare providers and better understand how broadband investments are expanding across Arkansas.
Start by visiting the Arkansas broadband map and entering your address in the search bar. the map will zoom directly to your location. Next click on your location to view additional details. The map will tell you whether your address is included in a federal broadband program such as the bee program or whether it's covered by another broadband grant from there you'll see the internet service providers that report service at your address along with the information about the technologies they offer and the speeds they advertise. This makes it easy to identify who
currently provides broadband service to your home or business whether you're looking for an internet provider today or simply want to know if your location is part of a federally funded broadband project, the Aar connects broadband map it's your oneop resource. visitsit the map today and discover what's available
Speaker 60
25:58
a tremendous resource right that's available to the general assembly providers the general
Speaker 47
26:03
public they can answer the vast majority of questions so when sometimes we'll get inquiries
from from you guys right and it's you know a particular constituent in having a problem or they don't know who's serving them or are they part of a grant program or what's going on you know that that state broadband map which again is the most detailed one we've ever had can answer 99% of every question that a constituent will have for you so again a tremendous resource publicly available in any way that we can help you get that out and disseminate that we'll be more than happy to do that and wrapping up here I just wanted to return to the the bead dashboard that we put
together and and regarding transparency one of the things that we did with with this newest dashboard was at filters OK so you can search the bead program and the locations that were assigned in the be program and the the provider that won the awards for those locations you can do filters and you can filter by congressional district or technology or project or provider or county or municipality and especially for for the members of the committee by senate or House district, OK?
and just as a quick example it's at the top here and again this is publicly available anyone can use this represent meeks for you and your last meeting highlighted district42 on the map and so as a house member or a senate member you can filter the map or zoom in on your district and it'll list the data for your district so the providers who won awards in the beat program for your district the number of projects the number of locations the total grant award and the technology breakdown is all there for you and again publicly available we we we leverage
this a lot and people generally like what's available last slide beforee open you know Q andA portion here. one of the things that we added as well from a public stakeholder standpoint is people want to know and you hear it too you know when is it getting to my house right when are we getting connected? so what we did with the first country first state in the country that I know of to release a an in a real time progress dashboard system and so this what you're seeing here again is publicly available this
maps all of the bead projects across the state and it directly links with the portal system that the providers have to report into to our office and so on a monthly basis as the providers are out there building and constructing on a location by location basis this dashboard will update in real time and so people are able to search by their address and get updates and so again it's a real time insight into what's taking place the construction that's going on and I don't know of a way that we could be more transparent with folks through all of the methods that we try to do
so with that little Q andA here at the end and we'll
Senator Ricky Hill
Unverified
28:50
see we'll see what the committee hass thank youtaling. do we
Representative Stephen Meeks
Unverified
28:56
have any questions Representative meeks all right so first off thank you sir for the work you've done. you've done a tremendous tremendous job in that that office. so basically, um, according to this we're we're down to less than 10% of our citizens that don't have access to high speed internet that's correct that's awesome love seeing that. any idea with
how that compares with other states nationwide or we you know yeah that's a great
Speaker 47
29:19
question. I think one of the things that's not on this particular slide deck here from from 2022 to2024 Arkansas actually led the nation and increased broadband connectivity over that time frame 9% from 2022 to2024. so so one Arkansas is leading the country in expanding broadband connectivity you know there's always there's always more work to do I think folks that are still waiting
right for connectivity you know they don't care about my stats right they don't care that we've whatever they know that they're not stoked they're they're still waiting on connectivity in their family which which gives us the motivation to move with a sense of urgency this is you know everything you talked about earlier right the space stuff and and and economic development you know try doing economic development without internet connectivity it's not happening and so this is one of the most critical things that we can work on and we're doing we're doing
Representative Stephen Meeks
Unverified
30:16
have a maybe an estimated completion date when we think we'll have most everybody in the state taking care of for us by the end of the decade
Speaker 47
30:25
is our goal so by 2030 the beat program is a four year federal the federal guidelines give the providers four years to complete their projects that count that the clock has already started on them which would put us at at 2030. now I always impress upon them that I want it done in two years or less that's the expectation from my seat technically they have4 but we push very hard. I don't care how small it is or how large it is
the goal is 2 years or less and that's what we're going to try to
Representative Stephen Meeks
Unverified
30:51
do and then one last question came to my mind. at
one point there was a supply chain issue we're trying to get fiber because everybody else in the country is trying to do this is that supply chain issue still there trying to get the fiber to be able to put it in the ground or that
Speaker 47
31:07
is that getting better? Yeah sure great question you know what you've had now is a convergence, right? not only are again this is a42.5 billion dollars program across the country, right and so not only having all of
the states run these these broadband infrastructure deployments you now have the added data center builds they're taking place across the country which require fiber connectivity and and infrastructure and all that goes along with that so now you have a convergence of the the infrastructure projects and data centers and everything getting built you know the manufacturers continue to tell NTIA that they have it covered and they've made those commitments I think atT&t recently announced a3 billion dollars fiber deal with corning that was announced recently
so but yes it is a barrier I guess in short to to wrap it it's a barrier that we're aware of and we're tracking we do everything that we can you know from our seat here in Arkansas. thank
Speaker 79
32:01
you Representative mayyberry and this is one of your last meetings as well is it not it is
Speaker 80
32:07
yes so helpful shouldn appreciate thatpresentative there we go.
Representative Julie Mayberry
Unverified
32:20
you are so very easy to get a hold of and thank you for taking all the questions. Just remind me but I think I just found it. I was looking at that one, that map and I was trying to recall because it's been a little while since I looked at it what the gray dots with the green dots with the I don't know if you call it pink or red just kind of I I just found it online but just remind us what what does that mean what are all those different dots great question
Speaker 47
32:45
umpresentative Mayber was gonna saypresentative Mayberry and I will say you were one of the most invested
members of the of the legislature on on this on this topic still have one neighborhood that is just they need
Speaker 47
32:59
their recipients in the beat program they are there it's just not happening enough for him but it's ok yeah so what you're looking at here again this map's all 1.36 million locations until shelby fact checks me in a little bit on the on the count but what you'll see here is
that the gray OK locations are
Speaker 47
33:26
federal definition of broadband the the green dot locations are grant program locations but not the bead most recent locations and then the purple locations on this map are the beat program locationsy so served granted beat and then that there's just nothing that's if
Representative Julie Mayberry
Unverified
33:49
there's nothing that that would indicate
Speaker 47
33:52
and again there's more dots once you zoom in right but but broadly if you see a location without dutt that means there's no locations there there's no home there's no business there's no community anchor institution it's just you know forres or what have you OK. thank you. Thank you and I too would
Representative Denise Garner
Unverified
34:12
just like to say thank you for all of the communication it really it really did help so of the folks that we have left
what are the barriers to getting them service iss it location is it isolation is it what is it that I mean I I can guess that there's some places that may never be able to get fiber certainly but are there other alternatives what are we doing for that for that group that yeah that's a great question you know there should be there's
Speaker 47
34:42
always going to be some location right there was someone built a new house or the federal mapping miss someone there's always going to be a location there should be very few, OK
the be it could be77,000 locations or or the last of the last right there's a reason they're in this bucket right there's a reason a provider has not built to them yet right either density so there there are so few homes in that area that it makes it financially very difficult for a provider to bring in internet was not regulated it's not a utility so it's still it's still a for profit business right
so either locations are not dense enough to to date to have made the financial investment work it for them topography plays a rolerights are early in the mountains and there's granite and you got to drill through the granite to get there which makes it more expensive so typically geography and topography and density of locations is what makes kind of or breaks financial sense from a provider to go build to them but in any case that's the77,000 locations across the state most expensive that's why over time sort of your grant cost
perc location kind of goes up because you're you continue to get the better ones, better ones as you go so again these are the last of the last but there's always going to be a little few that's why you know they're they're through some of the other federal programs like USDA and then the the form bill there's additional broadband grant money in in the rural ne in the reconnect program through USDA universalervice store runs their program so there's always going to be a little bit of a funding flow to help pick up these locations but but the first part of your question these are
the last the last we hope to get them all and then secondly you know there was a place for every technology you know so even with a grant program some locations are just naturally so expensive to get to with a traditional fiber route that it would make sense for a for a aleo satellite system like aarlink or the amazon Leo competitor that's going to come online within the next year or so. so you have to ensure when you're running these programs that you select you know the best technology
for the right location and there's there's really there's room for all the technologies depending upon the
Representative Denise Garner
Unverified
37:04
hope for everybody that we're going to have something to be able to get internet service great thank you very much p re s ent ative meeks
Representative Stephen Meeks
Unverified
37:13
you'd mentioned the Leo satellites. How do how do we administer
that because that's more of an individual type thing versus a ISp provider Yeah sure so in in our for in the beat program we
Speaker 47
37:22
have grant awards I don't know if it's on it may be on one of these screens let's see
it's gonna be small but yeah we have grand awards for both Spacexx which is Starlink we have grant awards for Amazon and the Leo competitor. those the two satellite companies will certify that they can provide service to all locations they've been awarded at that point it's our expectation a little bit down the road but they would open up for instance both an online portal system where folks can go to register for their their service they would get equipment for at no cost to them
delivered to them where they reduced monthly cost associated with that service and so there's gonna be a portal system that they've told me about there'll also be a sort of a traditional telephone line the folks can call into because if you're signing up to get internet you may not have internet to get internet, right? So there'll also be a hotline number for folks to call in end of the day equipment at no cost to the home and a reduced cost monthly cost for service. So if we have constituents that
Representative Stephen Meeks
Unverified
38:22
don't haveet service now maybe the bead program won't get to them for a couple of years they could theoretically go to and
apply to get you know Leo service at least until yeah it'd be a great a great bridge opportunity for folks yes sir thank you very much
Senator Ricky Hill
Unverified
38:42
you sir appreciate what you do and what you've done for the state far as far as when you started I think I was at the first meeting you ever did in I think it was Keo Arkansas the day you started
or the day after you started it
Speaker 47
38:59
was I think it was the first week I was on the job the folks and look at Mayor White she is she is a a very she works hard for her community I tell you that and yeah first week at the little it's like it's also the fire station and city hall all in one yeah and and we were you know all that it was it was really neat because we were there and we're talking about the problem connectivity and what they what they needed and you had all the fire equipment in the same room it was very neat. it was it was
great and I will say you know it's been uh4plus years now o plus years it's been an honor to to be here
Speaker 52
39:41
and to do this work and I very much appreciate it you've done a great job we appreciate and you're always
Senator Ricky Hill
Unverified
39:47
available for anyone if they have any questions so we thank you for that Moving right along section sectiond
discussion of the future of utilization artificial intelligence and cybersecurity implications for Arkansas. Mister Michael Greg you would Mrgreg just please introduce yourself for
Speaker 46
40:15
the record and and proceed. I'mer hit your microphone there.
Speaker 115
40:33
Sorry there you go good afternoonmi last A think told you how to do that good afternoon Michael
Speaker 117
40:39
Greg chief field strategist for Palo Alto Networks thank you all for having me here this afternoon. I just wanted to talk
Speaker 119
40:47
a little bit about kind of what I see because I deal primarily in sled so state local education is where I deal what I see from the states what they see from other states as far as AI and cybersecurity so as far as my background I've
published over two dozen books. I led cyber operations for the state of North Dakota for five years as that I grew us from about 20,000 endpoints to 250,000 in points during that time I was lucky enough to get invited to the White House to meet with the president and talk about our cyber programme that we developed and prior to that I worked international and I worked international for a terminal organization and I worked in thehiippines and in
Singapore and I really got to see firsthand this was during the time of NIMDA the kind of things that threat actors were starting to do as far as automated attacks and attacking organizations and large entities and so I just want to share a little bit of that today as far as what we see today and what we see in the environment going on so I'll kind of cover this in three areas I'll talk a little bit about emerging trends as far as what we see with AI and where AI is today. I'll talk a little
bit about kind of the current threat landscape as far as the types of cyber attacks and what we're seeing as far as in cyber and then finally what I would see is some opportunities there for the great state of Arkansas and then open it up for discussion so kind of starting off I I would say this if you think about it it's interesting because AI has come about so fast if you look even two years back 2 years back no one really even talked about this stuff it's it's really a complete
paradigm change and it's interesting because if you look at Sam Altmann, he said at one point he said what he said 26 months ago he said we added something like a million users over5 days and then more recently he said we added a million users in the last hour so just even in the last hour they added a million users so this transformation's come about very very quick and it offers a lot for states as far as what government can do as a really multiplier and
multiplier to help and and what I mean out of that is coming out of state government one of the things I figured out pretty quick is you can't hire yourself out of your needs of what you need. there's there's no way to meet that workforce that you need and with AI we've got real opportunity as far as faster document processing we've got real opportunities there is finding errors in things like fraud prevention for state benefits and others and and really increasing that the
experience that we see as far as individuals have when they interact with state government but at the same time unfortunately what I've got to say is is that it not only creates opportunities it brings high amounts of risk and I think it's interesting this quote up toward the top if you notice it says78% of users who use AI at work bring other tools rather than the ones that were given to them by the entity and and so my point is is it
like outside of my day work I do a lot of work with nonprofits and one of the nonprofits I work with they said you know we've got all this information about our donors and everything else we're just gonna drop that over into an AI program and see what we can find out and it said there could be some pII or other types of information in here that maybe we don't want to share publicly but they hadn't really thought about that and they hadn't thought about how exposing this could cause a big problem so really that education and awareness that we have to bring forward to the state for
them to understand what to use and how to use it is gonna be a big paradigm change now for the current threat landscape and what we see going on as far as the landscape is that this is truly a paradigm shift and here's what I mean by that if we think to the past and we think of like code and applications and programs we look at application lines of code we look to see if they have vulnerabilities in there and it's very deterministic to have people find these problems we
can look for those but with AI it's much different these attacks can mimic what you'd think of as normal usage. and you could think of something like well I'm gonna automate payroll or I'm gonna automate payment out to recipients and you might be able to do that but unless you do things like keep human in the loop and you have good controls for this what may look is normal traffic could very quickly turn into something where it's been turned for bad
or it's been turned in some way that exposed some type of security weakness now as far as the actual threats that we see and that we see from our investigative branch unit42 we really see four trends in 2026 so we go out after there's a big breach, after there's an incident we work with cities counties schools higher education, K12 and these four themes have been consistent in
what we see one is is that AI is a force multiplier that threat actors are now using AI to move very quickly and to operate at speeds that previously were unheard of the second is in the majority of these attacks we see when we look at these attacks identity is the number one item that these threat actors use to gain access and get in. identities in almost all these software and the software supply chain is gonna become even more critical than it's been in the
past it's who we buy from do we trust them? do we know what they're giving us have we vetted it is it secure and finally in the scary one to me is nation state actors what nation state actors can do and what we've already seen them doing just over the last six months to year to 2 years back and I'll talk about each one of these in a little bit more detail. so the big one is really AI is a force multiplier so Palo Alto was very lucky because we got early access to what are known
as these frontier models and when we got early access to these frontier models what we were able to do is look at our own code and do a self inspection and when we did this self inspection in less than three weeks we found the equivalent of literally5 years' worth of vulnerabilities so we found what would have taken our testers five years to find in three weeks and that's great if you're a customer of our product that's a great thing to have because now I can say our product is much more secure but here's the
thing if you buy product from somebody else that didn't vet it if you have homegrown code that the state's built inho if you have applications that are open source and these open source applications haven't been vetted that means the threat actor can now decompile or disassemble this code very quickly and find these vulnerabilities at machine speed. so identity this is trend number 2 and in trend number 2 about an
89% of the cases we look at when we go out and we work a breach 90% have to do with identity. that could be human identity that might potentially be shared accounts it could be potentially system accounts it could be AIbas accounts but in most of these the threatat actors gotten in by some form of identity and here's what's scary about that once they get in and they get this access it looks like a normal user it looks like Senator Hill, it looks like Representative Meeks it looks like Michael Greg it looks like
any normal user so as they move laterally between the network and move between Department of transnsportation Health and humanman Services whoever else it may happen to be it looks like normal traffic and because of that that allows them to move laterally very quickly and not be detected until massive damage is done. ransomware other types of attacks the next one is identity anyone see in the last six months to a year where they showed North Korean hackers hacking in they
appeared to be US citizens they would apply for jobs and but they look just like someone that was here they sound like someone that was here they speak English but the whole idea was the threatat actor use these synthetic identities and with these what they're trying to do is get a job get hired get a userna and password get access in and then once they get access in they now have credentials and again they're using that access to get in and cause damage or wreak havoc
the other part of this is think about things like in the old days everybody at one point probably got that email from the Nigerian prince and he was going to make sure you got what a million dollars and make you help help make sure you get part of that yeah that's not real sorry sorry sir but but today what they can do is through AI they can generate a unique threat email or scam for each individual on here I I I looked at some previous ones where you you
folks had looked at things like delete me and others to see what information was on the web they can gather that information and target each one of you individually this is is really impacted me enough as an example I told my bank I said I don't want you to do any their transactions with me over the phone I want to go in person for them because someone could simply take my voice from this committee meeting here today make a clone of my voice and then call into the bank and say transfer this money or move this money
so this whole fake identity thing is gonna continue to be a big problem or big issue as we move forward hi rd one we have here is supply chain and with supply chain and with supply chain it's all about who we buy these items from and what we buy. so when we look at this from unit42 in Palo Alto here's what we see we see a large percentage there of the actual attacks in the attacks that are coming in something about3.8% of an increase using thirdpar applications coming
from those third parties that's risen to 23% of the total cases we look at in 2026 and in 22% of those they used vulnerabilities to maintain that access and get access. think of it like this if the great state of Arkansas was going to build a new building on to the capitol. If Department of Transportation was going to build a new bridge you'd probably want to make sure the rebar was the right rebar to the right strength that the concrete used was a specific
type of concrete you'd want to have inspectors or auditors come in and see that they've built it to code. when we buy software now we have to inspect it very closely when it comes from third parties because otherwise we do not know whether or not we are going to inherit their vulnerabilities so looking at this code becomes much much much more critical than it's been in the past Number4 is nation state actors nation state actors can include
China, North Korea, Iran now sometimes they do this to get instant access sometimes this can be done for long term persistent access to stay inside these networks or maintain that access I'll give you an example just over the last few months we've seen multiple states impacted as far as their water systems and their water systems have been impacted by what we believe are Iranianbased threat actors and others and for this I'd like to be able to say that these individuals did something
unique that they did something that was hard to do but what they did in the majority of these attacks was they scanned the internet, they looked in for open ports and services that were tied to these waterbas systems then they simply used default usernames and passwords credentials that had never been changed and used those to log in and get access so some of this goes back to just basic hygiene practices moving this stuff off the web, changing usernames and
passwords and putting that basic hygiene in place in other cases though it's more critical think of for example the targets we've seen against US infrastructure including power including pipelines anybody remember for example the colonial pipeline eastern US colonial pipeline was hit knocked out all oil and gas distribution on the east coast caused gasoline shortages caused their shortages in thismagine if threatat threatat actors now got
in persistently and turn this off on large areas with water maybe we can do without that for a short period of time but imagine electricity goes down for hours or days that's an impact that stops everything so these types of attacks are something also that we see that you're gonna have to be concerned with so the final piece of this is really in the hands of the threat actors they can now use these frontier AI models to dramatically accelerate attacks
so what it used to take long amounts of time can be done very quickly. I'll give you an example in in my previous life in state government and in private industry taking30 to45 days to patch infrastructure was not unheard of it takes time to do this it's a cycle to get this done but with threatat actors they can now do this very quickly if you look at this graph what you'll see is if you look back just to about 2018 or 2019, the time frame there shows over two
years here's what I mean when a vulnerability or problem was found it took over two years before anyone actually created some type of their threat to use with it that time frame now today has fallen under 24 hours. meaning when a vulnerability is found the threatat actors have used AI and they've created now an attack that's fully automated from end to end and they can launch an under 24 hours. It means the historic way that
we've done patching in the past will no longer work we've got to change that approach to keep up with them which means we've got to use AI from the defensive standpoint to fight it from the other standpoint of what the threat actors are gonna do they can even set this up and set it up on their computer systems and say do the entire tag in from end and if it doesn't work the first time it can be polymorphic meaning it changes and it keeps trying so if it can't get in the first time think of the analogies your
house it goes and tries the door it can't get in it'll go around and try a window and see if it can open the window or get in that way so what of our opportunities here's what I'll say the one item we have to think about out of this and we clearly have to consider is this is that if we don't do anything there is an impact from this and and that's the great thing that I appreciate you allowing me to speak here today because the goal really here is to make individuals aware where you can assess the risk and you can determine is it something we can
accept? do we transfer it? do we mitigate it? how do we handle this risk? and what we see over the organizations in public and private50% in general have some type of breach each year. out of that the disruption duration on average is 241 days. so over six months the financial impact is about4.4 million dollars per impact so it's the cost of do we spend now and do we put defensive controls in or do we spend later and we clean up after the ransomware
breach. Here's what we do see though when we take and we look at things and we look for example like at the industry and entities that have put in AI and have used AI for defense we see a reduction of around $2 million. so the impact they have is much lower than what we see for those that have not put put AI in place to defend here's the other one and I think this is interesting is a former
state CI so I can tell you that adding more security tools one on top of another on top of another doesn't help the process if you look at the slide what you'll see is accumulating31 different tools over 13 different companies means you're paying 13 different bills you've got 13 different vendor contracts and you're forcing state employees to long in log into multi ple consoles and tools to see what's going this is the same thing I had when I started I literally felt like I had to
have my head on a swivel cause I had to turn and look here and I had to turn and look here and I had to turn and look here to see what was actually going on so that consolidation means that you're much better off when you can consolidate this down so what I did was I consolidated down all these point tools so the result was first I cut the over overall overhead of having these redundant line items also because now I had these integrated automated tools where I used AI but I
still had human in the loop. I was able to reduce down my time and I didn't need to hire fi0 other analysts to do it what I was able to do is take my existing analyst move them to more fulfilling types of work and at the same time handle this noise in the background and what it did for me was when I started my analyst on on point usually stayed about 12 to14 months and I'd lose them they'd burn out by using these types of techniques I push my analyst over40 months.
they'd stay3,4 years because they were doing more fulfilling types of work better meeting the citizens of the state's needs and at the same time they were able to grow and grow in what they were doing so let me show you these numbers these these are not numbers from some vendor marketing material these are actual numbers from my work that I did as a state CI so to give you some idea of implementing any AI using it with human in the loop and being able to do this and build this in for defense what'd you get
out of it? So when I looked at things and this is 13 month period in one3 month period I was able to reduce my meantime to respond for attacks coming in from over 10 hours down to55 minutes. I was able to take the fishing meantime to ownership take that down by 98% of the previous time I had now only had a few number of vendors I had to deal with only had a few products and my team could focus on what was most important my time in fishing and and
looking at fishing which is usually always a big problem that's on average over half of any what state cyber program looks at as fishing and that trying to trick people in reduce that down by about 97%. so I would say this there's many different ways that the state can benefit from proper AI implementation one is just on the client services and being able to move to where people can get those services they need more quickly and get that information that's what I loved
about the last presentation was how you could go down there and drill down on the map and get to exactly what you want when you want it and citizen's got access to that wo is gra raise that overall level of government efficiency and the third piece of it is really that consolidation of platform approach to security. so consolidate down that number of tools use those single platforms use AI to fight bad AI and at that point really changed the paradigm of what we see today so in closing I'd just like to say this
AI is an accelerator it's either going to accelerate state efficiency and defense or it's going to accelerate adversarial intrusion governance visibility, machine speed defense is going to determine which side of that line that state government lands on. thank you all for your leadership, your time here today open for any questions great presentation we do appreciate you very much for doing that and we'll
Senator Ricky Hill
Unverified
1:01:45
turn it right over to Representative meeks
Representative Stephen Meeks
Unverified
1:01:51
so thank you for your for your presentation and that was kind of making the point I was trying to make when I my opening statement essentially this game is going to be won by who has the better AI? it's going to be AI versus AI state government versus versus the bad actors and if we don't put these tools in place it's going to be detrimental to our citizens that you know we have a lot of data out there for
our citizens and so where where where do you I guess it's more comments and questions. where do you see not only Arkansas but other states as far as implementing these kinds of strategies, you know what what can we do as a state to make sure we're a leader in this area that we're protecting our citizens data and that we are not falling behind that we're not vulnerable because and the reason why I ask
that is if it's easier for them to pick on Idaho, they're going to pick on Idaho instead of Arkansas, right? We want them to pick on Idaho and North Dakota and everybody else. So how do we make sure we're not the easiest target
Speaker 117
1:03:04
Representative meeks members of the committee first thing I'd say is I love that analogy because the analogy I I would agree with you I would say it's much like
Speaker 119
1:03:11
that that they say if you're at a camp out and a bear comes into the comes in and starts chasing everybody out you don't have to be the fastest runner but you don't want to be the slowest one
either so so first I think all of you are taking a huge step here today because it's understanding that problem and that the paradigm has changed and that the times we live in changed I think that's the first piece. The second piece out of that is starting to look at those programs and those ways to be able to do that and not to add headcount and add people but be able to add that efficiency in the third part is just look at that overall attack surface because what I described as an example with water was simply they left
these water systems exposed they had default user names and passwords and threat actors leverage this so doing basic hygiene along the way will go a long way toward helping address this problem and
Representative Stephen Meeks
Unverified
1:04:11
last question is that one of the pieces of legislation that I passed last year was to require that state agencies have training for state employees. can you talk about the importance of that and any recommendations to make sure
that so that we don't have employees that are taking data that needs to stay secure and putting it out in the public chat at GTp. Representative meeks members of the
Speaker 119
1:04:41
I mentioned I work with several nonprofits one of them ishabitat for humanity if you go out to havebiat humanity and I love working for them cause I figured out how to do so much stuff that I couldn't do before but my point is this in the morning when you go out there if they're gonna give you a circular saw or
they're gonna give you some other type of power tool you have to go through training first before they give you that tool otherwise their insurance cost would be huge AI is no different much like we have fishing training and we need fishing training to tell people you shouldn't click on that link, you shouldn't pick up that thumb drive you found in the parking lot and bring it in and plug it into your computer we have to do the same thing with AI it's not that people don't want to do the right thing they have to be educated on it
so my personal approach would be much like you're probably doing fishing awareness training you add in AI awareness training in much the same way so that people understand those risks and they understand it if they put that data or information in those programs the potential risk or impact of that because they want to do the right thing we just have to help educate them as far as what that is Thank you
Senator Ricky Hill
Unverified
1:05:57
next we have Representative Richmond make it fast
Representative Marcus E. Richmond
Unverified
1:06:03
Thank you Mr chairir. on one of the concerns I have seemed like in this particular problem area that we have is that it always seemed like we're we're reactive in our response and and constantly trying to undo the damage that has been done I would think that AI would be able to make us put us in a position where we could be more proactive possibly get ahead of this or have you seen any states or is there anybody that you know out there that's actually as part of the defense for the
state created teams that literally just go in and search for these vulnerabilities and and look for the the potential problem and and the other thing then is can we eventually get to the point of who actually did this instead of guessing that well we think it was the Iranians we think it was Chinese whatever. Thank you. Yeah, let me I'm gonna answer thank you Representative Richmond
Speaker 117
1:06:59
members of the committee I'm gonna answer the in part first in and then come back to the other
Speaker 119
1:07:07
piece you can do attribution many times but attribution's very tough because they come through one entity to another entity to another entity so you can find out but sometimes I just wanna say it doesn't always matter because if they've caused damage in an outage we've still had the damage and the outage and if we find out that it's North Korea it's another entity there's not always a lot that we can do so we can trace it back but that won't always maybe help you in
the moment and and in in the moment of that and and the interesting thing about me getting to see50 states is is is if you've seen what one state does there's49 other ways to do it and usually the other states are doing it49 different ways but but that's not wrong because you get to see a lot of different ways this is handled now here's what I've seen is some states are going in and they're doing such things as virtual patching so what they do is they at the firewall level put these controls in place very early the
other thing I've seen that some entities are starting to do is is just bring in a team and they bring in a team and the team burns down that backlog of vulnerabilities and burns down those vulnerabilities that are there and the second piece is look at that process so here's what I mean by that you have things that are inside your house and they're inside your house and that's hard for the bad guy to get to but you have things outside your house maybe you have some stuff on the front porch you have some stuff on a carport. you have some stuff outside in the yard that they
can get to that perimeter surface if you can reduce down what's there think of that as yourac surface and you can remove the water and the sewer and the other systems where it's back behind those layers of protection then you've given your yourself more time to patch that and secure that so securing what's seen as external working on that first and moving that down and then using teams to address those items that are highestri, highest impact first, maybe doing that as a one time spend is what I've
Speaker 134
1:09:12
thank you sir. thank you Mr Chair sounded like a military plan didn't it the only other question was s that's
Speaker 116
1:09:31
the reason we cut your speaker off we're not to that yet but it very well could
Senator Ricky Hill
Unverified
1:09:35
be oh p re s ent ative Collins please take your time sir. thank you Mrir. well I appreciate you being
Representative Andrew Collins
Unverified
1:09:43
here and I appreciate the presentation. I guess you know I I kind of have a question about the format. I understand you're here because you're invited to to present to us it does seem to me that if there are things that we as a state should be doing that the real conversation should be with our state sister who is in the room right here and and does a great job and and probably is well informed about everything that you said so while I'm glad to hear it you know it's good for me to hear I feel like the the actionable items
that they're already gaps in what we're doing it's gonna be with that conversation so I guess my question is do you have plans to talk to him or is that something that he is he needs to to have the conversation with you or do you feel like he is probably in his work as as our great states is so gotten all this information that is probably putting that into practice in some
way I I I would agree that your team's doing great work and and
Speaker 119
1:10:40
I think the thing that I bring
to the table is a different point of view in my role what I get to see is what all 50 states see and the types of incidents that we see across the United States now as far as any help with your team I I know Gary I've talked to these folks before and I would think of that quote as irron sharpens iron so one man sharpens another and and what I mean by that is I'm certainly available to consult and advise however is needed if I can help in any way but my my
role here today is just kind of say what we see as far as is attacks over the entire US the soft spots we see that threat actors are going after and what we're seeing where states win and states lose. meaning we had the city of Saint Paul taken offline last year we had the state of Nevada that had a huge breach and had to shut down portions of their own network because they were not sure how far thereat actor had gotten in I just wanna to really help advise and and give that insight into it to give
better understanding of it to help these folks with the presentation and the work they do here for the great state of Arkans OK
Representative Andrew Collins
Unverified
1:11:56
and I have again I guess I just will make a final comment I feel very confident that he is looking to have those conversations with people who are sharpening him and his team and but I appreciate you informing us as well thank you thank you Representative Collins.
Representative Brad Hall
Unverified
1:12:17
you for being here today. I'm I'm kind of AI illiterate I guess. I just know I push a button and it comes up and I ask it a question and answers it you know whether it's right or not I have no idea. but my concern is is that you know in the future as we get into this with you know we're in a war with Iran or a military conflict what happens if we go into a military conflict and and they start really attacking our like data centers. what happens to to the AI at that point do does our water systems completely shut down because to
me I feel like AI makes us kind of soft, you know it's easy and people are are creatures of habit and we like easy and and once we lose those I guess so the the people that that work those jobs or do those things we can't really call them back to do that and and that's what concerned you know like I used to work on my truck and and now I pop my hood and it might get better gas mileage but I can't work on it you know so I just like to know, listen to your response on that thank you
Speaker 119
1:13:21
Representative Hall members members of the committee what I would say is as far as like the data center piece of it that's not really my bailiwwicker area. I'm more about my areas of of knowledge or cybersecurity risk and compliance but I would say that forreat actors trying to get in nation states and others they're going to look for easy points of attack
Speaker 122
1:13:40
they're going to look for that soft spot and try to get in so again if it's something they can see or access like the water systems we discussed
and that doesn't have even the basic controls put in place like usernames and passwords changed then we've got real issue and I'm right there with you with the vehicle I love to work on vehicles but I can't do it on anything new anymore because I don't know anything when it's underneath the hood it's all electronic. Thank you Representative Hall seeing no other
Senator Ricky Hill
Unverified
1:14:13
questions Mister Greg, we do thank you very much for your time sir and appreciate you being here and we encourage you to share any of
the knowledge or any information that you have about other states what they're doing what they're not doing with our people. thank you thank you sir we're gonna jump real fast we had someone to come in that actually won't signed signed up to speak today on the closed session which you won't be able to do that a little bit later on so we're gonna get Miss Marianne Means to come come forward please introduce yourself for the record and tell where you're from and what's you're an expert on.
Speaker 143
1:14:59
Um, I'm Doctor Marionneines and I'm appreciate this opportunity. So thank you Chairman meeks and Chairman Hill and members of the committee for allowing me to say hello. I'm I am Doctor Marionyons, founder and CEO of Secure Energy incorporated it's an Arkansasbased cybersecurity andgy technology company. I'm also serve as a CTO and executive vice president of emerging technologies at Curtis Stout, which is an 80 year old electrical contractor here in
LittleRock, Arkansas as well. I moved to Arkansas three years ago and prior to that I spent30 years in Washington DC working at the intersection of cybersecurity, national security and critical infrastructure protection as well as emerging technologies in those fields. my background has included work with standing up Department of Homeland Security now 25 years ago. I was on the infrastructure protection transition task forcece where they brought 22 agencies together to really focus on critical infrastructure
also with standing upp US Cybercomand which was a few years later when joint task forcece JTFGNO the global networkations transitioned to US Cybercomand as a part of its move up to near Fortad and also working with nest and the National Science Foundation and some specialized cybersecurity development and Department of defense and other intelligence and federal agencies so today I wanted to
share and I'm gonna make this over here so I'm not looking sideways. one of my primary focuses is taking that experience and building capability right here in Arkansas. This is a very special state and I really believe in its future and want to make sure that we're energy resilient and cybersecurity is at the heart of that and I do appreciate the the speakers already today kind of doubling down on that so with that through securenergy we're we've developed a a capability that comes out of the
intelligence community. I'm not here to sell that but I just want to make you aware of it calledlledrusted rid talk. it is an Arkansasbased developed cybersecurity technology focused on protecting operational technology and it it controls our energy and cyber our critical infrastructure. we also just recently received an award from the army to do that very thing in a program that's focused on cyber resilient tactical microgrids and power
plants for our nation so it's very exciting. this I share this because it's important to me that Arkansas has the opportunity to become a recognized center for energy resilience cybersecurity, microgrids, defense technology and critical infrastructure innovation. We have tremendous assets here as you all know our universities, our utilities, our electrical and man u f act ur ing industries, military installations right here nearby and technology companies and most importantly
our people and the the resilience that comes from our our wonderful people in Arkansas. what I want you to know about me is I want to be a resourcedarkansas, been the legislators dealing with questions involving cybersecurity, artificial intelligence, energy infrastructure, grid resilience, defense technology or emerging technologies, I'd be honored to provide whatever technical perspective or assistance that I can. And I also want to help bring federal investment there's a
lot of federal investment that's possible here and I'm already with just one year of being a womenowned Native American owned small business that I stood up as an Arkansas company. we won a an award within nine months with the army that's a $10 million contract. so we are we are looking to bring in the investment. I'm working with the venture center. I'm working with the small businessinessdministration and really just doubling down on making putting Arkansas on the map from a federal perspective it already is on the map but really putting it on the critical infrastructure
protection cybersecurity map. So with that and also technology development we've got a lot of innovation and I'm tied into some of the innovation my husband and I stood up as a nonprofit called Smart innovation Corporation. it's an Arkansasbased nonprofit. We want to give back and help the workforce development and especially in the STtem education and bringing our young people up in this area. there's so much opportunity and I think if we come together as a state we can provide jobs for them so that when they're here they can
grow here and live here and stay in Arkansas and so have to chase jobs maybe in WashingtonC or or California or something like that but we want to make them at home with technology opportunities and advancement right here and let's see. sorry my last few things. I have spent much of my career working on these challenges nationally and at this point in my career, I want to bring that experience home. it's actually my husband's home. I we met in Virginia
and he grew up in Arkansas and we've been back and forth for30 years with kids and grandmas and all that but now we made you know, Arkansas our home moved here just three years ago so with that thank you for allowing me to introduce myself and it's sort of a casual just get to know your way. I just really do want to be a resource. I'm very much about educating that workforce and helping us advance as a state. So thank you very much. so so let me ask a question I
Representative Stephen Meeks
Unverified
1:20:42
think you answered it but you you were in Washington DC you you came to Arkansas to develop a cybersecurity business was it was it I guess what was the motivate you know is the environment in Arkansas favorable for small businesses such as yours to grow in this space is that one of the reasons why you chose to come here because obviously you could have gone anywhere in the country. I mean you said to Virginia, I think family may have been a a motivator there
but talk to us about why Arkansas for growing this business and are there things we can do as lawmakers in state policy to encourage that in other businesses thank you for that question yes, actually
Speaker 143
1:21:28
it started as a family move and it became a reality to me that this is the absolute best place to start a technology company. I've been able to
be introduced to the ecosystem with the venture center, many of the there's incubators there's incredible resources for small businesses and the AB I'm probably going to mess it up the Arkansasmallusinesstechnical Development Center the major resource they they host opportunities for the small businesses that I mean no comparison. let me just give you an example. last Friday actually rode back on the airplane with government Sanders believe it or not we were seated next to each
other which was exciting but I was up there for what was called a a government matchmaking event put on by themallusiness Administration. There were like30,000 people there and like maybe40 government officials that we were trying to get matchmakers with impossible. I I had two appointments and I flew up there for that and as an example of what happened in Arkansas when the AB
what did I say TdC sorryut that same kind of event on with the American Seed Fund and it was the same kind of thing. there were 20 government officials there and the ratio was I had a meeting with every single one of them that there was almost fewer companies there than there were government opportunities to speak with. So the the opportunity of for access and relationship with the the government and the for instance today this would not
happen in Washington DC where I'm just you know in the audience and meet you right before the meeting and you invite me to say hello. That is extraordinary and it means so much to me as an individual and to me as as an innovator and a technology leader and somebody who wants to inspire a younger upcomer in the entrepreneur world. this is the place to do it and and and also not just the personal side and and the the support there is investment
there are there are big grants there the EITC program is extraordinary for a company like mine. I'm gonna go through that program and have a a fac il it ated you know, Series A race that is supported and encouraged and the investors are coming forward because there's actually it derisks their investment. so there's I just so appreciate Arkansas and I think it's a leader in a in supporting small business, especially in the technology front. as lawmakers we love hearing
Representative Stephen Meeks
Unverified
1:24:17
that thank you and thank you for your willingness to visit with us today.
Senator Ricky Hill
Unverified
1:24:26
thank you appreciate thank you for for addressing us appreciate it very much before we move on to the to the next next phase of the meeting is I wanna personally say Representative meeks thank you for your service to to this
committee and to the state of Arkansas and to the state legislature overall the two of us have shared part of part of our districts together in the past and with the
redistricy and we kind of got split up and stuff but always enjoyed working with you and everything and I know you're passionate about the technology and everything here that's really wanted to say thank you for your time thank you for your service and I personally appreciate everything you've done for the state of Arkansas and wish you the best in the next next adventure in life so thank you for that very much
sir. appreciate it. and with that being said if we can get a motion we need to take about a two minute break maybe or 2 to5 minutes to5 minute break on this so we have a motion can we get a second
got a second all the papers sayI opposed same sign we're gonna take up a five minute break and we'll get back with you and if any one of you want to you can say congratulations to Representative meeks for some great years of service you're supposed to come back yeah
Unknown speaker
1:25:55
to come back and another go after you after you
said well don't
Agenda
A. Call to Order
B. Consideration to Approve the August 26, 2026, Meeting Minutes [Exhibit B]
C. Update from the Arkansas Broadband Office [Exhibits C1-C2]
- Glen Howie, Director, Arkansas Broadband Office
D. Discussion of the Future and Utilization of Artificial Intelligence and Cybersecurity Implications for Arkansas
[Exhibit D]
- Michael Gregg, Field Chief Information Security Officer and Director of Strategy, Palo Alto Networks
Closed Meeting Pursuant to Act 489 of 2025
E. Update on Audit and Enforcement Findings [Exhibit E]
- Gary Vance, Chief Information Security Officer, Arkansas State Cybersecurity Office
F. Other Business
G. Adjournment
Documents
| Title | Type | Pages | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Agenda — ADVANCED COMMUNICATIONS AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY - JOINT, Oct 2, 2026 | Agenda | 1 | Official source ↗ |
| Agenda — ADVANCED COMMUNICATIONS AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY - JOINT, Oct 2, 2026 | Agenda | 1 | Archived copy · official source no longer available |
| Exhibit B - 8-26-2026 - Minutes - Advanced Com. and Infor Tech | Exhibit | 1 | Official source ↗ |
| Exhibit B - Minutes 08-26-26 | Exhibit | 1 | Archived copy · official source no longer available |
| Exhibit C1 - Arkansas Boradband Office Presentation | Exhibit | 25 | Official source ↗ |
| Exhibit C2 - Arkansas Broadband Office Video | Exhibit | 1 | Official source ↗ |
| Exhibit D - Palo Alto Networks Presentation | Exhibit | 25 | Official source ↗ |
Speakers
Senator Ricky Hill
Unverified
Representative Stephen Meeks
Unverified
Speaker 47
Speaker 52
Speaker 60
Speaker 65
Speaker 68
Speaker 79
Speaker 80
Speaker 81
Representative Julie Mayberry
Unverified
Speaker 91
Representative Denise Garner
Unverified
Speaker 88
Speaker 46
Speaker 115
Speaker 117
Speaker 119
Representative Marcus E. Richmond
Unverified
Speaker 122
Speaker 134
Speaker 116
Representative Andrew Collins
Unverified
Speaker 138
Representative Brad Hall
Unverified
Speaker 143