GT Edge AI will be presenting on Build Your Own AI Cyber Home Lab powered by Dell and NVIDIA!
AI is reshaping cybersecurity, but most people's experience stops at ChatGPT. Home labs are already a proven way to build cyber skills, and this workshop extends that model to AI.
In this hands on workshop you will build your own AI agent, no code and no prior AI experience needed, and point it at a real security task like phishing triage, incident response drafting, or tutoring a student through a cyber concept. Along the way you will pick up the foundations that make it all make sense: what inference is, how tokens work, and why the choice between open and closed models matters. All of it demonstrated live rather than on slides.
You will also see where the data actually goes. We will run the same agent two ways, on a hosted model and on a fully air gapped local system, and compare them side by side. That difference is the whole ballgame for anyone handling real phishing samples, student records, or anything sensitive, and it is the question every school and organization is about to face.
You will leave with an install runbook to rebuild the lab at home, and a classroom ready module you can run with your own students.
Built for educators, students, early career practitioners, and the AI curious. No prior AI experience required.
This 90-minute workshop provides a comprehensive blueprint for organizing, managing, and scaling a successful student-led Capture the Flag (CTF) program. Led by the team behind the Valentine-themed GMU HackFax x PatriotHacks and Marvel-themed HackFax 2025 CTFs. Timeline & Breakdown:
00:00–00:20 | Story & Organization: Narrative on growing a student-led CTF to a 10-category operation, managing a 72-hour event, and securing strategic partnerships with AWS, Virginia Cyber Range, and other companies.
00:20–00:35 | Collaboration Ecosystem: Best practices for managing cross-organizational workflows between student clubs, development teams, faculty, and sponsors.
00:35–01:00 | Challenge Development: An inside look at the design process for different categories from development to deployment. The team will also break down how challenges were documented so anyone could learn them and how 3 skill levels: Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced were accommodated for.
01:00–01:15 | Blueprints & Lessons Learned: Actionable recommendations, platform bottleneck takeaways, and a browser-based showcase of the Virginia Cyber Range Cloud CTF interface to demonstrate rapid deployment.
01:15–01:30 | Open Q&A Panel: Interactive floor with the CTF Development Team to answer audience questions regarding scaffolding, scaling, and student engagement.
Technical Requirements - Laptop with stable network connection - Virginia Cyber Range Account with ability to join Cloud CTF via browser
