Presentation at Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM): The Future is Bright

I recently had the opportunity to present to the Cybersecurity master’s degree students at the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM) during a family vacation in Spain. Thank you to the UPM faculty, especially my host Dr. Víctor A. Villagrá for the invitation and the tour.

In my session,  I spoke about the need for Zero Trust, its definition and current state, and reviewed several enterprise case studies. I speak about Zero Trust all the time, but not usually for this type of audience. The students were interested and engaged, and asked some very good questions. Some of the more notable questions were about how Zero Trust affects networking infrastructure, and about how it interacts with the enterprise identity management ecosystem. 

One question that stuck with me was from a student who will be graduating in a few months. They have a technical undergraduate degree, and are adding to that depth with this master’s degree. Even so, they are challenged in finding cybersecurity jobs, since they do not yet have professional experience. I didn’t have a perfect answer for them – I recommended explicitly looking for organizations with entry-level training and mentoring programs, and to get involved in professional organizations virtually and in-person. 

Overall, I was impressed and inspired by meeting these students, and optimistic about their future. If anyone has recommendations for where these graduating students could look for entry-level positions, please let me know.