#196: Building Cyber Warriors: UTSA's SOC & Elastic's AI Secret Sauce [EDUCAUSE 2024]

#196: Building Cyber Warriors: UTSA's SOC & Elastic's AI Secret Sauce [EDUCAUSE 2024]

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Featuring:

Kendra Ketchum, Vice President for Information Management and Technology and CIO at the University of Texas, San Antonio

Jared Pane, Director of Solutions Architecture at Elastic

What You’ll Learn:

Leadership Philosophy & Team Building

Discover Kendra's transformative "humble, hungry, and kind" leadership philosophy that's reshaping technical teams at UTSA

Why Kendra actively avoids hiring "brilliant jerks" who might be technically strong but ultimately damage team culture and prevent success

How embracing failure as a pathway to growth creates resilient, innovative teams: "Fail fast, pivot faster"

UTSA's Student-Empowered Security Operations Center

The remarkable journey from concept to impact: How UTSA's SOC has placed 179 students directly into tech roles, creating vital "connective tissue" for San Antonio's tech economy

Inside the innovative "glass screen" SOC design that transforms cybersecurity education into an immersive experience where students feel "part of something big"

Why Kendra challenges higher education's fundamental approach: "If you're not consuming the knowledge you're creating in these students, what are you doing?"

Elastic's AI-Powered Cybersecurity Revolution

The "secret sauce" behind Elastic's vector database and AI search capabilities that detect vulnerabilities competitors miss entirely

How Elastic's attack discovery transforms SOC operations by using AI to analyze thousands of alerts in minutes, not days

Texas A&M's rapid response to a devastating 2019 ransomware attack and why they made Elastic Agent mandatory across their technology infrastructure

Breaking the Status Quo

Strategies for challenging the dangerous "that's how we've always done it" mentality in higher education

How cross-sector collaboration between universities, government agencies, and industry partners is solving complex cybersecurity challenges

The power of staying curious: "When you nurture and grow people, I am just as feisty and fiery in protecting them too"

Timestamps

(02:53) "Humble, hungry, and kind": Building teams that drive results through trust

(07:55) Elastic's AI-powered search: The difference between "being on the news" and staying secure

(13:42) UTSA's SOC origin story: Creating career pathways and economic impact

(21:45) Higher ed's responsibility to "consume its own product" by hiring graduates

(26:45) Inside Texas A&M's ransomware response and security transformation

(31:30) Change leadership: Challenging the status quo and finding paths to "yes"

(36:18) Innovation through experimentation: "Let's try it and see if it works"

(39:43) Final advice for rising technology leaders: "Stay curious" and "be authentically yourself"

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