2025 Rocky Mountain Cybersecurity Symposium + RMUG

Today’s youth are growing up in a world that encourages a deep involvement with technology. Yet these same children are oftentimes unsupervised and unprepared to play safely on the digital playground—where they can very easily make bad and potentially dangerous decisions. The adults in young people’s lives have a responsibility to guide young people, who are spending a large part of their lives immersed in the digital realm, with a comprehensive cyber safety and cyber ethics education. Learn what you can do as an educator, parent, grandparent, and member of the community to drive generational change as we work to reduce the harms with giving children unfettered online access.

Everyone knows email is one of the most common methods for hackers to compromise users and environments. This presentation covers multiple interesting methods of how it can be done, beyond the regular attacks (e.g. phishing, file attachments, etc.) that most people know about. It includes several video demos, including one by world famous hacker Kevin Mitnick. Attendees will be surprised and wowed by the innovative attacks and just how easy they are to accomplish.

In cybersecurity leadership, there’s a constant temptation to downplay risk in favor of comfort, consensus, or optics. But pretending something is “handled” doesn’t make it safe. In this candid session, Bill Hunkapiller explores how Florida State University is shifting toward a culture where risk is acknowledged, owned, and addressed head-on. Learn how to enforce risk tolerance at an institutional level, how to communicate hard truths to executive stakeholders, and why security maturity demands more than compliance checkboxes. If you’re ready to challenge the culture of “cyber-as-it-looks-good-on-paper,” this session is for you.

Physical access is often treated as a facilities issue—but in today’s threat landscape, it’s also a cybersecurity imperative. This session explores how doors, locks, badges, and building access systems can expand your attack surface if not managed as part of a broader cyber risk strategy. Learn how access control systems can be exploited, where integration with IT systems can create vulnerabilities, and what steps you should take to better secure the physical perimeter of your organization. Whether you're managing a campus, a critical facility, or a remote office, understanding physical access as a cyber issue is no longer optional.