Thursday, October 14, 2021

UNCW’s Center for Cyber Defense Education will host the third annual Cybersecurity Awareness Conference on Oct. 23. This one-day conference, held during National Cybersecurity Awareness Month, will feature speakers from business, academia and government discussing a variety of cybersecurity-related topics.   

This year’s conference will feature two keynote speakers who bring decades of experience in national defense, homeland security, cybersecurity leadership and policy guidance:  Antonio “T” Scurlock, deputy chief learning officer for the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency; and Rear Admiral (Ret.) David Simpson, former chief of the Federal Communications Commission’s Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau. 

Additionally, three panel discussions are planned:  

• Current Cybersecurity Trends -- Panelists: Rob Andersson (IBM), Matthew Bohne (Honeywell), Adrianne George (MyExecCyber), Ed Lewis (Northrop Grumman); moderated by Hala Strohmier (UNCW Department of Computer Science) 

• Cybersecurity Awareness -- Panelists: Jacob Cox (ACM Cyber), Rob Duggan (Earney & Co), Brad Hayes (Circadence), Scott Lathrop (Raytheon), Jordan Pike (nCino); moderated by Geoff Stoker (UNCW Congdon School) 
• Cybersecurity Compliance -- Panelists: Andrew Hoover (CMU-SEI), Ron Lansford (CISA), Peter McClelland (Ward & Smith), Albert Roethlisberger (DIT); moderated by William Wetherill (UNCW chief information security officer). 

“Through events like our annual conference, the CCDE increases awareness of the community in cybersecurity issues, offers a networking and collaboration environment to regional cybersecurity professionals and keeps students informed of current trends and technologies,” said Ulku Clark, CCDE director. 

With more than 460,000 cybersecurity job openings in the U.S. (17,000+ in NC), the need to produce workforce-ready graduates is acute and UNCW is striving to meet this growing need. 

In 2018, UNCW was designated as a Center for Academic Excellence in Cyber Defense Education through 2023, a designation given by the National Security Agency and Department of Homeland Security. 

UNCW is also a member of the North Carolina Partnership for Cybersecurity Excellence, a statewide cybersecurity coalition that supports NC industry and government. NC-PaCE recently received a $2 million grant from the National Security Agency to further its work to establish cybersecurity as an economic development tool for the state. 

Currently, UNCW offers an array of cybersecurity-related academic programs, most recently adding a new cybersecurity major that will begin in fall 2022. This is the first cybersecurity undergraduate major offered in the UNC System. 

Prior to the one-day virtual conference, CCDE will also sponsor “Phishing and Spoofed Email Investigations,” an online workshop hosted by Trend Micro Incident Report Specialist Said Varlioglu on Friday, Oct. 22 from 2–3:30 p.m. The workshop will give more insight about how to identify and track phishing emails through email header analysis and IP address investigation.  

-- Krissy Vick