University staff, students and members of the Lexington community attended a multi-panel event featuring technology professionals who discussed all aspects of cybersecurity, specifically the role of artificial intelligence (AI).
Hosted by the University of Kentucky’s Information Technology Services at the Singletary Center for the Arts, CyberCon featured cybersecurity experts, free pens, t-shirts and stickers on Friday, Oct. 10.
The event’s keynote speaker, Helen Patton, cybersecurity executive advisor for the technology company Cisco, hosted a panel titled “AI & The Cybersecurity Workforce,” focusing on how AI has impacted the world of cybersecurity and its role in the field.
Patton emphasized during her panel that even though interacting with new technology is not a brand-new experience, AI is constantly changing.
“But the main thing here is to play and play safely. So, this is where we’re at, as of today, with AI and cybersecurity workforce,” Patton said. “If I was giving this talk a week from now, I guarantee you something will have changed.”
Stephen Burr, the chief information security officer for UK’s Information Technology Services, said the event was created to highlight the importance of cybersecurity amongst members of the university and community.
“This conference is just something we do annually every year just to promote cybersecurity awareness and get our students, faculty, staff and community involved,” Burr said. “It’s become a really big event, and we see incredible participation in it.”
Caleb Thatcher, a sophomore majoring in computer science, said he has begun to combat scammers and threats through his invention, Honeypot, which traps attackers attempting to break into classified or important information.
“People that are on the other end are using what’s called a secure command shell to send attacks and commands through, and then we can see those and analyze their behavior,” Thatcher said. “We can basically use all of that data from people that are attacking us and visualize it out.”
The website will block people from stealing data by preventing access to anything related to UK, Thatcher said, ultimately making UK’s network safer.
Sayana Adhikari, a senior majoring in information, communication and technology, said cybersecurity is necessary with the dangers online these days.
“There’s a lot of things in the world, with the cybersecurity going on, how people are using misinformation and stuff,” Adhikari said.“So, trying to prevent that is why I’m here. You know, going through the cybersecurity field, I feel like I can do something in the industry.”
When it came to the topic of AI, Adhikari said she was fascinated with the technology’s quick progress, which has been scary to watch, but she believes it has both pros and cons.
“So we can never say, like, ‘Oh, it’s doing good or it’s doing bad,’ it’s like in between, because it depends on also, like, how you use it and how you are consuming it, like on your algorithm and stuff,” Adhikari said.
