SOCORRO, N.M. – The new Cybersecurity Center of Excellence and the Office for Innovation Commercialization hosted a special workshop on Cybersecurity Entrepreneurship on Friday, Sept. 27.

The daylong event featured keynote speaker Eric Cornelius, Chief Product Office of Blackberry | Cylance. As Chief Technology Officer, Cornelius drives innovation at Cylance. Previously Eric served as Chief Product Officer, V.P. of Innovation, Director of Critical Infrastructure/ICS and Technical Director of Incident Response/Critical Infrastructure at Cylance. 

Cornelius (pictured at right) is a 2002 graduate of New Mexico Tech with a bachelor’s in information technology. He shared his experience and knowledge as a security practitioner, consultant, trusted advisor and product builder to his work in elevating our product development initiatives, and to leading our product management and corporate development teams.

Dr. Lorie Liebrock, graduate dean and professor of computer science, said this inaugural event is intended to become an annual event. 

“Having students and faculty interact with cybersecurity professionals gives them the opportunity to learn about the cybersecurity challenges being faced by professionals right now and what are the opportunities for them in industry,” Liebrock said. “From that and their own passion and creativity in cybersecurity, we hope to facilitate new innovative solutions being spun out in companies in New Mexico.

Liebrock said the cybersecurity industry is growing rapidly. Events such as this workshop serve to ease the transition from college to career.

“This gives opportunities to build connections, start relationships, and begin collaborations with people from other institutions and industry,” Liebrock said. “Overall, this will result in opportunities for high-paying, critical skills jobs in New Mexico for our students and improve the economy of the state; that is good for everyone.”  

Dr. Peter Anselmo, director of the Office of Innovation Commercialization, said the event was devised to connect the New Mexico Tech community with the cyber community to access to knowledge and ideas regarding cybersecurity entrepreneurship.

The event also demonstrated that the NMT Cybersecurity Center of Excellence will serve as a clearinghouse for entrepreneurs to connect with potential opportunities.

“The vision for the Cybersecurity Center of Excellence is to make New Mexico a leader in developing technologies and companies around novel and forward-looking solutions to pressing cybersecurity issues,” Liebrock said.

The event included breakout sessions on a variety of interesting topics:

• Green/Smart Grid/Cities
• IoT/Wearables
• Mobile Privacy and Security Issues
• Assessing and Defining Markets
• Cyber Tech Competition

Bringing together cybersecurity ideas, problems, and challenges with entrepreneurial opportunities to grow the cyber economy of New Mexico.

The event provided a forum where students, faculty, and other entrepreneurs learned about technical and related market opportunities in the cybersecurity space. This may involve everything from learning how to develop conceptual frameworks to evaluation of well-formed startup ideas.

 -- NMT --