2026 Virginia Cybersecurity Education Conference

GT Edge AI will be presenting on Build Your Own AI Cyber Home Lab powered by Dell and NVIDIA!

Artificial intelligence is rapidly transforming cybersecurity. However, its greatest impact on education may not be the addition of new AI courses or technologies. As AI evolves from a productivity tool into an intelligent collaborator, it challenges long-held assumptions about what students should learn, how they learn, how they are assessed, and which foundational skills will define the next generation of cybersecurity professionals. Preparing students for this future requires more than updating cybersecurity curricula; it requires rethinking the educational experience itself.

Drawing on lessons learned from the ongoing evolution of GMU’s cybersecurity engineering programs, this keynote explores the opportunities, challenges, and difficult tradeoffs involved in redesigning cybersecurity education in the age of AI. Rather than presenting a single institutional model, it proposes a practical framework of design principles that educators, academic leaders, industry partners, and policymakers can adapt to their own educational contexts while preparing students for an increasingly AI-driven profession.

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