2026 Virginia Cybersecurity Education Conference

Do you currently incorporate the PTSA (Packet Tracer Skills Assessment) into your Cisco Networking Academy courses? If so, consider attending a session designed to introduce you to its latest updates and enhancements. Participants will explore the new features of the tool, gain insight into the improved scoring reports, and learn how to efficiently access and implement these resources within their courses. The PTSA is integrated into all three CCNA courses, as well as the Network Security curriculum, making it a versatile and widely applicable assessment option. It serves as an effective alternative for evaluating student skills, particularly in situations where access to physical networking equipment is limited or unavailable. By leveraging this tool, instructors can provide meaningful, hands-on assessment experiences in a virtual environment while still maintaining alignment with course objectives and industry standards.

Cybersecurity is the only subject we all agree matters but somehow we keep calling it optional. This session is the argument for why it should be a mandatory subject, and what it actually looks like.

Drawing from work across Virginia public schools, the University of Mary Washington, Virginia Commonwealth University, The White House Communication Agency, Microsoft and Nehlos a Cybersecurity company, this session makes the case that cybersecurity belongs in the core curriculum, not as a specialty track for students who already know to look for it, but as a foundational skill alongside reading, writing, and math. The workforce shortage is real. The equity gap is real. Every graduate, will work in environments where basic cyber literacy is non-negotiable. We just haven't updated the syllabus to reflect that yet.

Attendees will walk through practical models for K–12 integration, community college pathways, and higher education general education requirements, along with work-based learning bridges that connect mandatory coursework to industry certification and real employment pipelines.This session is designed for K–12 educators, curriculum coordinators, higher education faculty, and workforce development professionals who are ready to stop having the same conversation and start building something different.

CyberSafe AI is an engaging, game-based learning experience to help students develop knowledge and skills needed to become safe, responsible, and critical users of artificial intelligence (AI). Developed by the Virginia and U.S. Cyber Range at Virginia Tech, CyberSafe AI introduces learners to the opportunities and risks associated with generative AI through interactive scenarios, real-world examples, and game-based challenges.

Cybersecurity as we know it today did not emerge from boardrooms, compliance frameworks, or certification bodies. It began out of hobbyist curiosity, from the hacker culture and Tech Model Railroad Club at MIT emerging during the 1950s, the phone phreaking subcultures of the 1970s, and the early computer hacker scene spanning meetups, bulletin boards, and zines of the 1980s and 1990s, including Phrack and 2600: The Hacker Quarterly. Such early hackers were characterized by a drive to understand systems deeply, challenge assumptions, and push boundaries, all qualities that are increasingly difficult to find in today's structured, credential-driven cybersecurity education and professional landscape.

This session invites educators and industry professionals to reflect together on what has been gained and lost through the process of professionalizing cybersecurity as we look to our future. Drawing on the histories of groups such as the Legion of Doom and Masters of Deception as ethical case studies, and tracing the cultural lineage from early hacker communities through cyberpunk aesthetics in popular media, the session argues that curiosity, critical thinking, and a willingness to question authority are not “soft skills.” Rather, they are foundational competencies the field cannot afford to undervalue and can reclaim in productive ways.

Participants will explore together how cybersecurity history and hacker mindset can be meaningfully integrated into contemporary curricula, what it looks like to teach students to think like hackers within an ethical practice, and how the field might recover a culture of genuine inquiry and curiosity without abandoning professional rigor.

Looking for a streamlined way to bring Virginia Cyber Range labs into your Canvas courses? This session is designed for instructors who want to incorporate hands-on cybersecurity experiences while keeping course design efficient, organized, and student-friendly.

Participants will follow a step-by-step walkthrough of how to access the Virginia Cyber Range, navigate instructor resources, select appropriate virtual machine environments, and integrate labs directly into Canvas. Using ITN260 – Network Security Basics as a model, this session demonstrates how to embed labs, structure modules, and create a clean, intuitive learning experience without overcomplicating course setup.

The focus is on practical implementation and time-saving strategies that can be applied immediately. Attendees will leave with a ready-to-use Canvas module structure, a clear integration workflow, and access to shared resources that can be quickly adapted for their own courses.

Ideal for instructors looking to enhance or refine their use of the Virginia Cyber Range in Canvas.

Persistent disparities in access to cybersecurity learning opportunities continue to limit participation among students in rural communities. Analysis of national and regional trends in cyber competition participation (an increasingly important avenue for applied cybersecurity education) reveals significantly lower engagement from rural students compared to their urban peers. These gaps reflect broader challenges, including limited instructional resources, reduced exposure to career pathways, and lower teacher capacity in specialized content areas. Targeted, gamified interventions offer a scalable approach to addressing these inequities. By adapting competition-based models into structured, classroom-ready experiences, educators can introduce accessible entry points that build foundational skills while sustaining student engagement. When paired with intentional curriculum design and supports that strengthen teacher efficacy, these interventions can extend beyond isolated activities to form coherent pathways in cybersecurity education.
Findings from implemented programs in rural districts demonstrate the potential for such approaches to increase participation, improve student confidence, and catalyze broader community engagement. Evidence from these case studies highlights how small, strategically designed interventions can evolve into sustainable, community-wide cybersecurity initiatives that connect K–12 education with local workforce development needs. This work contributes practical insights for expanding equitable access and strengthening cybersecurity education ecosystems in underserved regions.

Vibe coding is an approach to computer programming where you code based on intuition, flow, and feel (e.g. ‘vibe’), rather than following strict methodologies or detailed development frameworks.  Vibe coding uses AI to quickly generate executable code from natural language prompts. It makes the practice of software development more accessible, particularly for those with limited programming experience.  Although this may sound incredibly helpful and appealing, AI generated code frequently comes with hidden risks. Vibe coding often introduces security vulnerabilities that may seem harmless at first but can lead to serious problems down the road. This session will introduce ‘Vibe coding’, its advantages, and disadvantages, including potential hidden cybersecurity vulnerabilities.  This session will also touch on classroom awareness and possible use.

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.

The cybersecurity workforce gap is not simply a shortage of candidates: It is also a preparation issue. Students often enter internships with foundational academic knowledge but limited experience applying it in team settings within professional environments. This session presents a structured internship model developed by Triple Point Security to address that gap through an incremental, cohort-based approach designed to complement academic coursework at the post-secondary level.

The program is organized around two complementary learning tracks: technical skills and professional development. On the technical side, interns progress from foundational concepts during their initial session through internal IT support, externally-facing projects, and proof-of-concept development in subsequent sessions with documentation and presentation treated as a core professional competencies at every stage. On the professionalism side, dedicated programming covers cybersecurity career pathways, certifications, written and verbal communication, responsible use of AI, and resume development. Structured networking roundtables featuring staff from across the firm, as well as external guest presenters, broaden interns' professional connections beyond their immediate team and the firm.

Attendees including university and community college faculty, academic program coordinators, and industry professionals will gain a concrete framework for designing or improving internship experiences that build both technical depth and professional readiness. The session will address program structure, the role of “soft skills” in workforce preparation, and practical considerations for establishing partnerships between cybersecurity firms and academic and other partner institutions.

Have your students encountered issues following handouts or documents in the Cyber Range before? Have you ever felt a bit overwhelmed with aligning courseware to exercise environments? Or maybe you’ve even had issues with students jumping ahead of steps in an assignment, resulting in errors and confusion.

If you’ve dealt with any of that, you’ll likely be interested in hearing about our upcoming exercise area feature, which could help alleviate those struggles.

In this session, we’ll highlight our Side-by-Side feature that allows integration with our courseware and virtual machines. We’ll explore key functionalities and capabilities that this feature provides, including:

-Displaying laboratory exercises and the virtual machine side-by-side
-Allowing students to submit answers to the lab questions within the interface
-Empowering instructors to download student submissions to review and grade

Join the folks from the Support Team to discover how you can incorporate this feature into your Cyber Range courses and enhance the learning experience for your students!

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"Cyber Range Sidekick! Courseware and Virtual Machine Integration" Slides

Skills-Based Hiring on the Digital Front Lines
How the DoW CIO is balancing academic pathways, apprenticeships, and hands-on capability to build a faster, more efficient cyber workforce   

In academia, the GPA is a vital metric of a student's discipline, theoretical mastery, and intellectual endurance. But on the cyber battlefield, the ultimate metric is operational readiness. This creates a critical tension: how do we bridge the gap between a student who excels on paper and a practitioner who can actively defend a network under live fire?


The Department of War (DoW) heavily values the foundational rigor of higher education, continually investing in traditional pipelines like the Cyber Scholarship Program (CSP). However, to outpace modern adversaries, we are expanding our aperture. Through our integrated Skills-Based Hiring (SBH) initiative and registered apprenticeship programs, the DoW CIO is shifting how we assess incoming talent. We are not moving away from academic excellence; rather, we are augmenting it with a strict, practical mandate: "Show us what you can do."

The DoW does not dictate academic curricula, but educators must be aware of how the national security apparatus is evolving its evaluation of talent. This presentation provides a transparent look at the DoW’s multi-tiered hiring ecosystem, exploring how we balance academic achievement with hands-on, skills-based assessments. By understanding these diverse pathways, educators can better advise their high-performing students on how to translate their academic success into immediate, mission-ready capability.