Analysis of millions of binaries across firmware, containers, applications, and cloud workloads shows systemic risk: 88% contained vulnerabilities; more than half had hardcoded credentials, and nearly a third exposed private keys. This session presents aggregated findings on the fragility of the global software supply chain. 

This panel will consist of educators, researchers, and practitioners who will explore recent incidents and lessons learned that help Texas organizations reduce risk. They will discuss the role of regulations to drive change and opportunities for employers to develop a skilled workforce equipped fight cybercrime.

Large language models have reshaped how organizations do business from supporting customers to making business critical decisions. However, their dependence on flexible, natural language inputs also introduces significant security challenges. Prompt injection attacks, where adversaries manipulate the model’s inputs to bypass guardrails, leak sensitive data, or produce malicious outputs, are particularly pernicious, with a low barrier to entry and potential for high-impact misuse. 

This presentation discusses a domain-specific taxonomy, APE (Adversarial Prompt Engineering) that extends beyond well-known frameworks like MITRE ATLAS or OWASP. Drawing inspiration from existing security taxonomies and ontologies, this taxonomy provides a breakdown of objectives, tactics, techniques, and procedures (prompts) associated with prompt injection attacks such as context overflow, few shot prompting, and tool spoofing. These techniques are further classified under broader tactical categories, including obfuscation, rationalization, and context manipulation. 

Attendees will learn how to use a taxonomy-driven approach to guide offensive testing without limiting attacker creativity, improve the consistency and coverage of assessments, and help defenders prioritize mitigations, monitoring, and incident-response planning. Through practical examples, the session will show how the same framework used to systematically break AI systems can also help engineering and security teams build more resilient ones. 

 

Drawing on experience as both a cybersecurity builder and operator, Arnie will share best practices for deploying an Autonomous SOC to defend against Mythos-era threats, improve cyber outcomes, and lower the cost of security operations.

 

What if we started thinking about governing AI like we did networking? Any IT guy knows about the OSI model and it's 7 layers, but today in the agentic world we might be well served considering a similar construct. We will peel the onion on this topic and examine what an agentic control plane might look like.

 

Cybersecurity leaders rarely suffer from a lack of information. The harder problem is determining what matters, what is sufficient, and when there is still time to act.

This session examines how information, relevance, and time shape cybersecurity decisions under uncertainty. Using a simple See, Decide, Act model, it explores how leaders can move from visibility to understanding, recognize when additional information adds value—or delay—and act with confidence before the decision window closes.

 

As automation becomes more embedded in security operations, the question isn’t just can we automate, but how much is too much? This panel explores where organizations are drawing the line between manual control and automated action.

We’ll discuss how enterprises are safely deploying automation, how to build guardrails that prevent unintended consequences, and what it takes to prove these systems are secure, reliable, and accountable. 

Theresa will share her amazing journey of resilience and determination as a business professional, wife and mom of three that led her to the most visible position in the tech world, White House CIO. And that's before she became a CEO, one of the world’s leading media voices on technology and cybersecurity and star of the hit CBS TV series, "Hunted."  Drawing from her experiences leading in high-stakes environments, she will reveal how family and purpose have been her guiding lights in balancing home life, career, and service. Theresa’s uplifting message will inspire you to lead boldly, embrace challenges with grace, and thrive in every role you’re called to fulfill.