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WiCyS Virtual 2026 Agenda

 

WiCyS Virtual 2026 Agenda

All sessions except the opening and closing ceremonies will receive 1 CPE Credit from GIAC, ISC2 and WiCyS.

Wednesday, April 22

5:00 am – 7:00 am

Virtual Career Fair (morning session)

10:00 am – 10:10 am

Opening Ceremony

10:15 am – 11:00 am

Presentation: Cyber-Funding Success: Securing Scholarships and Grants for Students and Career Changers

Angela Clark & Rebecca Clark

Don’t let tuition be the barrier to a high-demand career! This dynamic session is the essential roadmap for aspiring students and career professionals returning to graduate school and seeking funding for their entry into cybersecurity. The session will unlock a comprehensive and multi-layered funding strategy that extends beyond traditional scholarships.

Attendees will receive actionable guidance on securing a range of financial resources, including merit and need-based funding, navigating federal and government aid, and strategic networking. Speakers will share proven techniques to build high-value connections with industry professionals and organizations that offer funding, mentorship and career pathway support.

Led by a seasoned faculty mentor and an NSF-awarded graduate research fellow, this presentation provides the crucial insights to successfully transition into or advance within the cybersecurity field without financial burden. Invest one hour to secure a financial future in cybersecurity!

Presentation: Securing the Unseen: Machine Identities & Credential Management in a Gen AI / DevOps World

Ramya M

In the DevOps-powered, AI-driven world, machine identities have discreetly surpassed human identities by a factor of hundreds. Credentials – API keys, tokens and certificates – are stored in each container, microservice and model pipeline component. If left unmanaged, these credentials can lead to serious security breaches. The topic of this session is how businesses can take back control of these invisible identities. In addition to understanding credential exposure risks in CI/CD and Gen AI workflows, attendees will examine real-world attack examples and acquire contemporary defense techniques like automated rotation, just-in-time access and secret scanning tools. A practical framework for handling machine identities at scale while striking a balance between developer speed and system resilience will be given to attendees.

Presentation: Neural-Inspired AI Security: Leveraging Neuroscience Principles for Cybersecurity Defense

Ms. Kritika

With the changing nature of cyber threats and their complexity and sophistication, a system based on rules has difficulties in keeping up with adversaries who are adaptive. The presentation is an innovative interdisciplinary solution that employs the neuroscience principles to improve the AI-based cybersecurity defense mechanisms. The use patterns of the research conducted in cognitive neuroscience on the topic of pattern recognition, memory consolidation and adaptive learning show how brain-inspired algorithms can transform the methods of threat detection and response.

It discusses three of those applications, including neural plasticity-inspired adaptive firewalls that learn and adapt attack patterns on-the-fly; cognitive load theory applications to optimizing security analyst decision-making under load; and neuromorphic computing architectures to ultra-low latency threat detection. This study indicates that zero- day attacks (60% better as compared to traditional machine-learning techniques) and false positive reduction (35% reduction) are significantly sweeter than typical machine-learning techniques.
This interdisciplinary amalgamation is responding to the increasing demand of responsive, intelligent security networks that have the capability to foresee and counter high-grade enemies. AI systems can be developed to emulate and improve these natural defenses and create a novel paradigm of cybersecurity resilience by comprehending how the human brain processes and reasons threats and makes security choices.

11:15 am – 12:00 pm

Presentation: All Aboard the Cybersecurity Employment Express - From Education to Employment.

Sajida Shabanali

Join this exciting journey from learning stations to the final destination as cybersecurity professionals. This presentation will outline strategic stops along the employment express, a metaphorical express train route designed to equip attendees with the essential tools and insights needed for a successful transition from learner to worker in the dynamic field of cybersecurity.

The employment express represents a structured pathway that students can follow as they navigate the complexities of entering the cybersecurity workforce. Each stop along the route symbolizes a crucial step in their professional development, offering targeted advice, resources and actionable strategies.

The goal is to empower attendees not just with knowledge but also with the confidence to embark on their cybersecurity careers. Throughout the presentation, presenters will emphasize the importance of understanding one’s unique skill set and aligning it with diverse roles available in the cybersecurity landscape.

This also will serve as a personalized roadmap to guide their career development. While traveling along the employment express, participants will leave with a sense of purpose and direction, equipped to take the next steps toward their future cybersecurity careers. Together, attendees will be prepared to meet the demands of this ever-evolving field, ready to contribute meaningfully and navigate their professional paths with confidence.

Embarking on this journey is an exciting opportunity for participants to explore the vast possibilities within cybersecurity, and the presenters look forward to guiding them every step of the way.

Presentation: The Ghost in the Machine: When AI Agents Become the Ultimate Insider Threat

Madeline DuPlessis

Cybersecurity teams are experts at hunting for human insider threats, but what happens when the newest, most privileged insider isn’t human at all? AI agents are being integrated into enterprise systems with unprecedented speed and granted access to everything from HR data and financial reports to sensitive patient records. They operate with legitimate credentials and are designed to execute complex, multi-step tasks autonomously, making them the perfect vector for a new class of sophisticated attacks.

This presentation pulls back the curtain on this emerging threat landscape. It will reframe AI agents not as passive tools but as a new type of privileged identity that can be manipulated, compromised or tricked into exfiltrating an organization’s most critical data. Drawing on real-world use cases in high-stakes environments like healthcare, this session will demonstrate how attackers can exploit agentic workflows. More importantly, it will provide a concrete security playbook for this new reality, focusing on applying zero trust principles to AI, threat modeling agentic workflows, and developing new strategies for monitoring and hunting these “ghosts in the machine.”

Presentation: Ethical Preparedness in AI-Driven Learning: Building Cyber-Aware Educational Systems

Olukemi Olaniran

Artificial intelligence (AI) is reshaping education at every level – from elementary to post-secondary – through tools like ChatGPT that assist with writing, coding and research. However, this rapid adoption raises urgent ethical and cybersecurity challenges: academic dishonesty, data privacy risks and unequal access to technology. As AI becomes embedded in learning environments, the critical question emerges: Are educational institutions equipped to teach its responsible use?

This presentation explores findings from a nationwide survey of over 240 Nigerian university students who examined how learners perceive the ethical implications of AI in education. Results show that students’ ethical awareness is not shaped by familiarity with AI tools but by their understanding of risks such as bias, misinformation and misuse. Those who recognized these challenges demonstrated greater responsibility and digital integrity.

The session will discuss how educators and administrators can embed ethics and cybersecurity principles into curricula, faculty development and institutional policy. It argues for a shift from technology adoption to ethical preparedness, teaching students not only how to use AI but also how to use it responsibly.

Participants will gain actionable strategies for integrating ethical risk discussions, policy frameworks and inclusive digital literacy practices to strengthen the cybersecurity readiness of future learners.

12:15 pm – 1:00 pm

Presentation: AI and the 2026 Threatscape: Securing Innovation in the Age of Intelligent Adversaries

Rishika Reddy Akavaram & Jaclyn Sanchez

As organizations adopt AI to accelerate products and operations, they simultaneously create new and rapidly evolving attack surfaces. This session projects the 2026 threatscape using lessons from 2025 threat trends and contemporary AI research, and it pairs forward-looking risks with hands-on defensive tactics. Adversary techniques will be examined, such as AI-enhanced reconnaissance, model inversion/data-poisoning, synthetic social engineering and adaptive malware, then demonstrate how defenders can respond with AI-assisted threat hunting, autonomous containment playbooks and continuous model trust validation. Short technical demos (SIEM anomaly visualization, AD attack-graph mapping in a lab, cloud misconfiguration scanning, LLM-driven incident summarization and a model-drift simulation) show concrete, reproducible approaches attendees can replicate in a safe environment. Participants will leave with a four-step AI security readiness roadmap, deployable playbook templates and concise checklists for protecting models, training data and cloud resources so they can secure innovation while staying ahead of intelligent adversaries.

Presentation: Intentional infosec career building through OSINT and shifting the paradigm

George Sandford

In cybersecurity and beyond, traditional hiring pathways often obscure opportunities behind jargon, gatekeeping and systemic bias. This session explores how open source intelligence (OSINT) empowers job seekers – especially those from diverse, nontraditional or historically excluded backgrounds – to navigate the job market with clarity and agency. In this session, the presenters will unpack how to decode organizational culture, align transferable skills with real-world role expectations and anticipate hiring needs using publicly available data. Attendees will leave with actionable techniques to bypass gatekeeping, surface hidden opportunities and position themselves as informed, adaptive candidates ready to thrive in inclusive, mission-driven environments.

Presentation: The Automated Adversary: Decoding AI-Enhanced Ransomware-as-a-Service on the Dark Web

Jalen Counterman

The normalization of artificial intelligence (AI) tools has created unprecedented opportunities for threat actors to enhance their malicious capabilities. This presentation addresses the critical need to understand how AI is being integrated into the operational models of cyber crimes, specifically with the lucrative ransomware as a service (Raas) ecosystem. Current trends indicate that machine learning algorithms, like DeepSeek, are being utilized to create more sophisticated and evasive malware, enabling automated attack campaigns, personalized phishing and social engineering attacks.

This session will analyze the technical capabilities and economic structures facilitating the distribution and monetization of AI-powered malicious tools on dark web marketplaces. This session will explore how AI is weaponized for key operational aspects, including threat selection, encryption optimization and automated attack campaigns. It also will highlight how platforms such as CACI Darkblue’s CluesAI, SOCRadar and Sola Security can help defenders monitor, analyze and protect against these evolving threats.

Attendees will leave with a clear understanding of the immediate threat landscape, receive actionable recommendations for developing defensive frameworks and learn about detection tools accessible to combat these highly advanced, AI-enhanced threats in the modern digital landscape.

1:15 pm – 2:00 pm

Lunch Break

1:30 pm – 2:00 pm

Panel: Lunch-n-Learn:

2:15 pm – 3:00 pm

Presentation: GRC Reimagined: Engineering Trust Through Automation

Grace Pfohl & Lindsey Nicholas

Governance, risk and compliance (GRC) has traditionally been a manual, fragmented process dominated by spreadsheets, siloed frameworks and repetitive evidence requests. As organizations scale and regulatory demands evolve, this approach becomes increasingly inefficient and difficult to sustain.

This session offers a tactical guide to modernizing GRC through automation, AI and engineering principles. The presenters will explore the foundations of GRC, including control design and framework harmonization, and then dive into how automation can streamline evidence collection, evaluation and reporting across multiple compliance domains.

A case study will demonstrate harmonizing compliance frameworks, mapping overlapping requirements, consolidating evidence requests and using AI to ingest and align new standards. Attendees will learn why harmonization is essential for scalable compliance and how automation can make it achievable.

This session also will examine the current challenges in GRC, including manual audits, reactive compliance and the limitations of traditional tooling. The session will highlight how AI and automation can address these issues while emphasizing the importance of human-in-the-loop design and maintaining security oversight.

Through a tactical case study and demo, attendees will see how GRC engineering can reduce operational burden, improve audit readiness and enable resilient, scalable compliance programs. Participants will leave with practical strategies to harmonize frameworks, automate compliance workflows and engineer GRC functions for the future.

Presentation: AI as Your Career Co-Pilot: Practical Strategies for Cybersecurity Career Development

Liz Fortibui

Everyone is under constant pressure to stay current in a field where the learning curve never flattens. Brilliant analysts burn out trying to chase every new certification, and talented engineers stall in their careers because they can’t figure out what skills to prioritize next.

Traditional career development approaches aren’t cutting it anymore. Mentorship programs have waiting lists. Training budgets get slashed. Conferences happen once a year, but threats evolve daily.

Within the past two years, AI isn’t just changing how to defend networks, it’s revolutionizing how people can manage their own professional growth. The presenter has been testing tools, talking to professionals at every career stage and documenting what actually works.
This session shares everything about using AI as a career co-pilot. It will cover practical strategies for identifying skill gaps, optimizing a professional presence and preparing for opportunities. Personally used tools will be demoed and frameworks will be shared that have helped dozens of mentored professionals.

There also will be an honest talk about the pitfalls. People have made questionable career decisions based on AI recommendations, and the presenter will share what was learned about maintaining human judgment while leveraging these powerful tools.

Presentation: Universal Design, Universal Security: Accessibility as a Catalyst for Safer AI

Katherine Pettit

This presentation explores how applying universal design principles to artificial intelligence (AI) development enhances both accessibility and cybersecurity. By integrating inclusivity from the start, organizations can reduce bias, improve trust in AI-driven systems and strengthen resilience against evolving threats. The session demonstrates that designing for accessibility does not only benefit users with disabilities, it also makes technology more usable, ethical and secure for everyone.

Through a practical lens, this session examines the intersection of accessibility, bias mitigation and cybersecurity, offering frameworks that bridge human-centered design and secure system architecture. Attendees will gain insights into how inclusive AI practices lead to cleaner data sets, and more transparent algorithms and systems that anticipate rather than amplify risk.

Participants will leave understanding that accessibility is not a compliance task, it is a catalyst for universal security. When things are designed with everyone in mind, technology is created that is safer, smarter and more resilient for all users.

3:15 pm – 4:00 pm

Presentation: AI Strategies and Ethics in Dark Web Crime Detection

Brooke Schärli

This session explores the integration of artificial intelligence (AI) in combating illicit activities on the dark web based on recent qualitative research with law enforcement, cybersecurity practitioners and academic experts. Attendees will gain insight into how AI tools – such as machine learning for pattern recognition and natural language processing – enhance the speed and accuracy of dark web investigations, serving as a critical force multiplier for professionals facing rapid, anonymized threats.

The session examines core technical opportunities and constraints, including the challenge of encrypted data and the need for human-in-the-loop verification to avoid false positives. It also addresses significant ethical and legal considerations such as data privacy, algorithmic bias, cross-border jurisdiction and the admissibility of AI-generated evidence. Attendees will learn policy and operational recommendations for implementing AI effectively and ethically, emphasizing multidisciplinary training, international cooperation and continuous human oversight.

Participants will leave equipped to recognize both the potential and limitations of AI in this domain, appreciate the ongoing need for human judgment, and articulate best practices that align technical innovation with legal and social responsibility. This session is designed for those seeking a deeper understanding of how AI advances law enforcement and cybersecurity strategy against emerging online criminal threats while ensuring foundational rights and ethical standards remain protected.

Presentation: Beyond the Break-In: How to Level Up from Entry to Junior Level

Morgan Hamlin

Landed a first cybersecurity role, and now what? Moving from entry level to junior level isn’t just about earning a new title, it’s about growing a voice, confidence and impact in the field. The early years in cybersecurity can feel like trying to level up in a game where the rules keep changing. It’s about learning fast, juggling certifications, decoding job descriptions and trying to prove belonging. This session will help participants play smarter not harder.

This session will break down what it really means to step into a next-level role: developing technical depth, showing initiative and turning support tasks into strategic wins. Attendees will learn how to showcase their achievements, find mentors who lift them up and build the credibility that opens doors to bigger opportunities. With relatable stories, honest lessons learned and practical strategies, the presenter will help participants transform the “what’s next?” anxiety into a clear, actionable roadmap. Attendees will reflect on skill gaps, personalized goals and walk away with tools to take charge of their career development with confidence and purpose. Because this isn’t just about climbing the ladder, it’s about claiming a space in cybersecurity.

Presentation: Managing The Overlooked Risk: Emerging AI In Third-Party Vendor Applications

Ilakiya Ulaganathan

As organizations accelerate AI adoption, an often overlooked risk is emerging from third-party vendor applications that embed AI capabilities. Limited visibility into these tools can create vulnerabilities ranging from data privacy issues to regulatory non-compliance, yet many organizations assume that external applications are inherently secure. This session explores the challenges and strategies for identifying, assessing and mitigating AI risks originating from third-party vendors. Attendees will learn practical approaches to extend AI governance beyond internal systems, align with emerging regulatory expectations and safeguard their organizations from hidden AI-driven threats.

4:15 pm – 5:00 pm

Presentation: Designing for Every Mind: Neurodiversity-Inclusive Cybersecurity Education Approaches

Rabia Bajwa

Traditional cybersecurity education often overlooks the needs of neurodiverse learners, including students with dyslexia, ADHD, autism or other cognitive differences despite the unique strengths they bring to the field. This presentation introduces an inclusive education framework to make cybersecurity learning environments more accessible, effective and equitable.

Through real classroom examples and practical strategies (e.g., multimodal teaching, cognitive load management, flexible lab structures), attendees will learn how to design instruction that removes barriers while enhancing engagement. The session targets educators, trainers and program leaders looking to strengthen talent pipelines through inclusive practices.

Presentation: Lights, Camera, Breach: Could Cybersecurity Frameworks Stop Hollywood Hackers?

Libby Adams

Step into a thrilling world where Hollywood’s hackers meet real-world cybersecurity! In this session, presenters will unravel the secrets behind blockbuster breaches and TV betrayals, exposing how entertainment’s most notorious insider threats mirror the dangers lurking in today’s organizations.

Through iconic movie and television scenes, this session brings cybersecurity frameworks like NIST, ISO, MITRE ATT&CK and CIS Controls to life, showing how the drama on screen translates to actionable defense strategies off screen. Discover how fictional breaches could have been stopped (or made worse!) by real-world controls, and learn to spot the warning signs before the credits roll.

Expect interactive case studies, lively discussions and practical takeaways that transform pop culture into powerful learning moments. Whether a security professional, a movie buff or simply curious, participants will leave with a fresh perspective on insider threats, a toolkit of proven frameworks and the inspiration to build a more vigilant, accountable security culture.

Lights, camera, cybersecurity – who’s ready to decode Hollywood’s lessons for their organization?

Presentation: Intelligent Detection & Response: Enhancing Security Operations with Agentic AI

Ashley Murray & Shannon Forcina

This presentation explores the integration of specialized AI agents to streamline and enhance security operation workflows. Two complementary systems will be presented: a detection engineering AI (DEAI) and a response analysis AI (TLDR) designed to work both independently and in concert.

The DEAI assists security teams by creating custom detection rules, validating detection logic and optimizing metadata to reduce false positives. Meanwhile, the TLDR summarizes security incidents, identifies critical security fields for better detection-response alignment, dynamically assesses severity and recommends next steps based on established runbooks.

This research demonstrates how these AI systems can communicate bidirectionally, creating a feedback loop where response outcomes inform detection improvements and detection metadata enhances response actions. This approach addresses common security operations challenges including alert fatigue, inconsistent documentation and the gap between detection and response teams.

The development methodology will be shared along with initial testing results and lessons learned in building these specialized security agents. The presentation will highlight practical techniques for crafting security-focused AI systems that augment human analysts rather than replace them, emphasizing how this approach improves detection coverage, response time and overall security posture.

Attendees will gain insights into the technical architecture of security-focused AI agents, understand implementation considerations for integrating AI into security operations, and learn strategies for fostering collaboration between traditionally siloed detection and response functions through intelligent automation.

5:05 pm – 5:15 pm

Closing Ceremony

Thursday, April 23

9:00 am – 9:10 am

Day Two Opening Remarks

9:15 am – 10:00 am

Presentation: From Prompt to Payload: Defending AI-Driven Tools in Adversarial Setting

Shubham Mishra & Meghana Rao

This talk will explore the growing security challenge of AI/ML systems that leverage external tools, APIs or agentic components (for example, function calling, plugins or orchestrated tool chains). Attackers are evolving tactics to inject malicious instructions, poison tool metadata or orchestrate cross-tool attacks to subvert seemingly benign pipelines.

This session will present real-world scenarios showing how prompt injection, tool poisoning, name collisions and orchestration abuse can lead to data leakage, privilege escalation or unintended commands. It will focus on how and why the attacker is able to manipulate the system not just that they can. Then, a layered defense strategy combining input sanitization, approval flows, sandboxing, anomaly detection and human-in-the-loop checkpoints will be proposed.

This session is designed for both practitioners and aspiring defenders. Attendees don’t need to be AI researchers to benefit, but the session will go deep enough into technical nuance to give them actionable ideas. Participants will leave with a clear mental model of how AI tool chains can be exploited and concrete paths to strengthen them.

Presentation: Cloud Native Security Anti-Patterns: Lessons from What Not to Do

Aastha Aggarwal

The rapid rise of cloud native technologies has transformed how modern applications are built, deployed and scaled. Kubernetes, containers and automated CI/CD pipelines have empowered engineering teams to deliver faster than ever before, but this acceleration also has amplified the impact of security missteps. While best practices abound, many real-world breaches still stem from the same recurring mistakes.

This session flips the script by focusing on what not to do. Instead of another checklist, attendees will examine real anti-patterns repeatedly observed across audits, post-incident reviews and open-source projects. From overly permissive Kubernetes RBAC roles that enable cluster compromise to hardcoded secrets in CI/CD pipelines and unvalidated SBOMs that create a false sense of supply chain security, these are the pitfalls attackers actually exploit.

Through each example, the session will explore the attacker’s perspective to understand how weaknesses are discovered and abused then extract the defender’s lessons – practical steps teams can take to eliminate these risks. The talk emphasizes actionable guidance, covering both technical fixes and cultural improvements that help teams bake security into their workflows rather than bolt it on afterward.

By the end, attendees will have a clear playbook of what not to do in cloud native security, empowering them to recognize anti-patterns early, adopt safer defaults and foster a shared security mindset across development, operations and platform teams.

Presentation: One Message, Many Audiences: Tailoring Cybersecurity Communication

Carla Voorhees & Gayatri Debnath

In cybersecurity, technical expertise is essential but it’s not enough. The professionals who make the biggest impact and advance into leadership aren’t always just technical; they’re the ones who can translate complexity into clarity, influence decision making and drive action across teams. This session dives into why impactful communication is as essential as detecting threats or writing detections and how developing this skill can significantly accelerate career growth. This session walks through real scenarios where the difference between escalation and resolution came down not to tooling or intelligence but to how the message was delivered, understood and acted on.

Whether a SOC analyst, threat hunter, engineer, aspiring leader or starting a career in cyber, attendees will gain insights into tailoring a communication style to executives, legal teams, PR, engineering and end users without watering down the technical integrity. The session also will highlight how strong communication builds credibility, visibility and influence, opening doors to opportunities that technical skill alone may not.

This session will empower attendees to elevate their voice, drive security outcomes and position themselves for career growth by learning to communicate with clarity, confidence and impact.

10:15 am – 11:00 am

Presentation: From Boardroom to Basement: Communicating Cyber Risk Across the Supply Chain

Lorri Janssen-Anessi

In today’s interconnected ecosystem, cyber-risk communication often fails not because of technical limitations but because of translation gaps between teams. Analysts speak in vulnerabilities and indicators; executives speak in impact and continuity. Bridging that divide is essential for achieving true resilience. This session provides a structured approach to communicating cyber and supply chain risk across organizational levels from operations to executive leadership. Using real-world examples and communication models, it will demonstrate how to transform complex technical data into clear, actionable insights for decision makers and external partners. Participants will learn techniques to tailor messages to non-technical audiences, align risk narratives with business goals, and use storytelling and visualization to convey urgency effectively.

The presentation concludes with practical templates and strategies to strengthen communication channels between security, procurement and leadership teams. Attendees will leave with proven methods to elevate conversations, foster collaboration and build trust across the supply chain.

Presentation: CAPTCHA If You Can: Insights into 2FA‑Phishing Kits

Ashley Salisbury

Many industry sectors are witnessing a surge of sophisticated phishing campaigns that embed fake CAPTCHA challenges to lend legitimacy to malicious pages and circumvent automated detection. This presentation examines the evolution of these “CAPTCHA-protected” attacks, focusing on the 2025 wave of phishing-as-a-service (PhaaS) offerings such as the Tycoon 2FA Phishing Kit. The talk will highlight how adversaries integrate dynamic CAPTCHA widgets, multi-factor authentication (MFA) bypass techniques and tailored lures (e.g., “Request Notice” and “HR Scam”) to target U.S. banks. The attack chain is dissected step-by-step – from initial lure delivery and credential harvesting to the deployment of malicious PDFs and embedded URLs that mimic corporate branding. Key findings include: the commercialization of CAPTCHA enabled phishing kits: novel 2025 upgrades that automate CAPTCHA-solving and MFA token replay; and observable campaign patterns that exploit specific regulatory communications. Mitigation strategies are outlined, emphasizing network-level CAPTCHA verification, endpoint hardening, user awareness training and industry-wide threat sharing. Attendees will leave with actionable intelligence on detecting and disrupting CAPTCHA-based phishing operations and a roadmap for strengthening 2FA resilience across the banking ecosystem.

Presentation: Making Cybersecurity VISIBLE: Leading with Inclusion in the AI Era

Sheena Yap Chan

The cybersecurity field is evolving faster than ever, but one critical element remains constant – people. As AI reshapes threat landscapes and workflows, inclusive leadership and visibility are key to building trust, innovation and resilience across teams.

This session introduces the VISIBLE Framework™ – Voice, Identity, Spotlight, Inner Work, Belief, Leverage and Elevation – as a practical model for empowering professionals to lead confidently, communicate effectively and strengthen diversity in cybersecurity and AI governance.

Drawing from lived experience and leadership research, the session will explore how authentic visibility builds confidence, retention and representation in cybersecurity workplaces. Attendees will engage in reflective exercises, discussions and real-world examples to identify strategies for amplifying diverse voices, navigating bias in AI-driven systems and cultivating psychological safety within technical teams.

By making cybersecurity leadership VISIBLE™, participants will leave with actionable tools to humanize technology, enhance collaboration and model inclusion as a core security strength not a secondary goal.

11:15 am – 12:00 pm

Presentation: AI-Driven Threat Forecasting Using Iterative Learning Models in Modular Function Spaces

Gospel Agu

Traditional threat intelligence systems remain largely reactive, responding only after an attack has occurred. However, industry findings from the IBM X-Force Threat Intelligence Index (2025) and Mandiant Global Perspectives Report reveal that organizations still struggle with delayed response times and limited foresight into emerging attack trends.

This presentation introduces a mathematical AI framework that applies iterative learning models in modular function spaces – specifically Mann, Ishikawa and Noor iterations – to enhance predictive threat intelligence. By incorporating modular function spaces, the framework achieves stronger convergence under non-linear and non-Euclidean conditions, allowing adaptive learning in dynamic cybersecurity environments.

Through Python (NumPy, scikit-learn) for algorithm implementation, Elastic Stack (ELK) for data aggregation and Kibana for visualization, the model is trained on historical incident data and refined iteratively to forecast potential threat vectors before manifestation. The iterative process enables the system to adjust its predictions as new patterns emerge, improving accuracy, stability and adaptability in threat detection.

By mapping results to MITRE ATT&CK frameworks, this work connects mathematical convergence principles with real-world adversarial behavior. The session highlights how modular-based iterative learning can bridge research and practice, providing security teams with predictive insights that transform reactive defense mechanisms into data-driven forecasting systems capable of identifying and mitigating attacks in advance.

Presentation: Teaching Cybersecurity Through Emotions: Invoking Emotional Memory in the Age of AI

Luis M Vicente

In an era where artificial intelligence (AI) and automation increasingly shape the cybersecurity landscape, technical mastery alone is no longer enough. This session explores how emotion – often overlooked in technical education – can become a powerful catalyst for deeper understanding and lasting learning in cybersecurity. By activating emotional memory, educators and mentors can help students internalize critical concepts such as ethical reasoning, situational awareness and threat response.

The presentation introduces a teaching framework that blends emotional engagement, storytelling and reflective practice with AI-driven tools. Through real classroom experiences, attendees will see how emotionally resonant scenarios, simulations and generative AI prompts can transform otherwise abstract cybersecurity topics into meaningful learning moments.

Participants will gain insight into designing lessons that connect logic with empathy, fostering resilience, curiosity and ethical responsibility in emerging professionals. By the end of the session, attendees will leave with evidence-based strategies for integrating effective learning into technical instruction along with practical examples of how AI can support inclusive, emotionally intelligent cybersecurity education.

This talk invites educators, mentors and practitioners to rethink how to teach security, not merely as a system to defend but as a human discipline to understand.

Presentation: AI-Driven FinTech Security: Smart Fraud Detection with Blockchain and Cloud

Tahani Baabdullah

This presentation explores the intersection of financial technology (FinTech), cybersecurity, artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), blockchain, and cloud and fog computing, highlighting their collective role in securing modern financial systems. Drawing from recent research and experimental findings, this session presents a comprehensive overview of how these emerging technologies can be integrated to strengthen fraud detection and enhance data protection in digital financial platforms.

The discussion will emphasize advanced AI and ML models for detecting and preventing credit card fraud transactions, addressing real-time analysis, anomaly detection and adaptive learning methods. It also will showcase how blockchain contributes to transparency and immutability while cloud and fog computing improve scalability and processing efficiency in distributed financial networks.

By bridging FinTech innovation with AI-driven cybersecurity, this research aims to offer practical methodologies and insights for developing secure, resilient and intelligent financial infrastructures. Attendees will gain a deeper understanding of the technological synergy shaping the future of financial security and how interdisciplinary approaches can lead to more robust fraud detection and prevention systems.

12:05 pm – 12:15 pm

Closing Ceremony & Welcome to Virtual Career Fair

12:30 pm – 5:30 pm

Virtual Career Fair (afternoon session)