Cyber Alumni Roundtable Discussion, October 28th, 2022

Overview

For cyber security month this year (October, 2022) CISA has deemed the focus to be on the “people” side of cyber. In the spirit of this, we’re providing any and all current students (or interested DU community members) a chance to hear from our graduates who are working in the field.

For the first part of this forum-style discussion, we will give each of our panel members a chance to introduce themselves, talk about how they got where they are, and anything else they think that those preparing to enter the cyber security field need to know.

In the second part, we’ll open it up to questions from attendees, or any discussion topics that may come up. If there are no questions, our moderator can guide the discussion down some relevant topics, but we’d prefer it be a back and forth discussion rather than a one sided conversation. So bring your thoughts, topics and questions that you’d like to bring up!!

WHEN: October 28th, 2022 @ Noon (1 hour)

WHERE: ECS Room 510 (The Thunderdome)

WHERE ELSE: Virtually via Zoom: https://udenver.zoom.us/j/84280432778 (passcode 611209)

WHO: Former DU students/graduates with jobs in cyber security fields

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About the alumni joining us

We will have an excellent group of alumni present to have a discussion with the audience. In no particular order they are:

Ryan Sloss:

Ryan is currently a Sr Information Assurance Analyst with SMX Technologies, working to solve RMF challenges in various cloud-based environments. He’s an accomplished DU grad having attained the CEH, CISSP, and CISSP-ISSEP certs, as well as held senior roles in Incident Response and Systems Security Engineering.

Virginia Hall:

Virginia works at Lockheed Martin as a Cyber Systems Security Engineer. Her work entails analyzing developing technology to assess vulnerabilities, and make design recommendations to improve Cyber posture. She also develops test plans to conduct pentests and verify compliance to required Cybersecurity design improvements in the technology.

Robert Zachrich:

Robert graduated from DU in 2018 with an MS in Cybersecurity. After graduating he briefly worked freelance consulting before joining DarkOwl a darknet data company. DarkOwl is a smaller company so he wears many different hats but officially his role is as an analyst and systems engineer. His responsibilities include assisting design, development, and implementation of various internal projects from kickoff through launch, coordinating and collaborating with cross-functional teams.

James Shannon:

James Shannon graduated from DU in 2018 with a MS in Cybersecurity. Upon graduation he worked as a Security Engineer at TTEC, and eventually ran the Vulnerability Management program at the company for two years and helped them achieve FEDRAMP certification. Today he is a Security Specialist at Cognizant where he does a bit of systems engineering, a bit of vulnerability management, and a bit of Level 2 SOC analysis. Additionally he has his CCNA and CISSP certifications.

Katie Leewaye:

Katie graduated from DU in 2018 with an MS in Cybersecurity. Started career with Lockheed Martin as a Senior Systems Engineer, but that encompassed a good deal of system, network, and security engineering. After being with the program for a few years, was recruited by a smaller company for more specialized endeavors. I wear many hats and support several programs with fun and interesting perspectives in cyberspace. In addition to Senior Systems Engineering, I’ve moved into the Defensive Cyber Operations arena.