Austin Tousaw on Cybersecurity, AI, and Building a Career Through Networks

[music] Welcome to Infoiversity. This is the official podcast of the Syracuse University School of Information Studies podcast. I'm Jeff Hemsley. I'm your host. Today I'm joined by Austin Tusaw. He's a senior manager of global data security operations at McDonald's. He's also a 2016 graduate of our high school where he studied information management and technology. He's built an impressive career spanning top organizations like McDonald's, Meta, Deote, and Fidelity investments. With nearly a decade of experience in data data privacy, cyber security and compliance, his work has taken him from data engineering to privacy program management for major platforms like Fidelity Reels, news feeds, like Facebook reels and newsfeed, and now overseeing global data security at one of the world's most recognizable brands. So when you think back to when you started at the high school, could you have imagined this path? >> The answer is no. Um I think there was amazing opportunities here. We saw new grads, right? It was always amazing to see new grads go to places like Amazon and Facebook and Synchry, Fidelity Investments, etc. So I knew people were I don't want to say successful because that's a career of success. Um, but I I knew the high school gave them a good path towards that first step into a career, right? Um, I never couldn't imagine that I'd be at four or five different companies um in the span of a 10 year, right? So, I'm 31, I feel 40 from a career-wise aspect because I've been at so many places at this point. Um, but I really think the high school helped me get that foundation that I needed to understand what was next. I think the classes that we have 352 which is our analytics class, 359 was our database class. I took a database security elective um which was like a 400 elective class back then and that gave me an opportunity to understand what I liked, right? Well, what were the things that I was interested in? What was I going to wake up every day and want to go to work for? So, I think the answer is no. That I didn't think I'd have this many jobs, this many companies, but we'll get into more about how I I've used networks and the importance of networks within not only the high school, but outside of the high school um and how important that has been in my jumps from from company to company or even internally from job to job. >> Yeah, that's one of the things I try to talk to our students about all the time that your network is where opportunities are going to come from. >> Yeah. So how did how did that career path evol evolve? Right? So like you left here. What happened next? How did you end up where you are? >> Yeah. So when I was here as a junior, even before I left, I did a cyber security internship at Fidelity Investments. Chose to move out to New Hampshire where one of the one of their uh headquarters is. Um came back for my senior year and already had a full-time job. So, they, you know, gave us our offers before we ended our internship. And I knew my entire senior year that I had a full-time opportunity, which was I don't know if that happens today still. I hope it does. >> Um, but that was amazing because I understood I knew I had an opportunity after college, but what could I do during my senior year that would help me excel after that, right? So, you I knew I was going into a data engineer, what they call the LEAP program, which is kind of a a smaller rotational aspect program. Um, but I took classes like data science. I I took classes like data database security. I took other advanced information security p uh classes that I thought were tremendously important my senior year without having the pressure of getting a job. Right. When I went in into the datab the the data engineering leap program at Fidelity um I realized I didn't want to be technical. >> Ah interesting. So that was a very technical program. Um from SQL to Python to some JavaScripting as well. Um and my first year out of college and and I'll say this bluntly. I it was a really hard job. I was sitting down every day headphones in working on a very technical database team and I [snorts] was looking around at what's next, right? What can I do next that's going to I'm going to be happier. I'm going to understand where I want to be and where my kind of my niche would be in my career. U and I used my internal network from my internship actually to land in a new role as a cyber security analyst. So I did a year as a data or database engineer on a very technical DBA team. So database administrator team and then I got an analyst role on a cyber security team. my world. I think that was when it just opened right back then is when something called the CCPA, which you probably are very well aware of, the California Consumer Privacy Act was coming. Um, there was a lot of regulation in the financial space at Fidelity Investments and they were hiring to get people to help. M >> um one of the things there is after a year I actually used a >> [snorts] >> um an high school grad referral to land at Fidel or land at Deote to do consulting. So there was an high school grad um who I still talk to today. Don't quite know where they are. I believe they're at some sort of technology fertility company. Um but I had I didn't know them during undergrad that much, right? I knew who they were. I think we knew who each other were and I had reached out via LinkedIn. We got in a text message and he referred me and I ended up at Deote. Now this was precoid when you did the Monday through Thursday traveling. >> Yeah. >> So I would get on a plane every Monday to Thursday and I was in a data privacy and data protection consulting practice. Now I think there on my journey through my career you realize quickly if that's going to be your job forever or if you want to get out quick and not travel four days a week. I don't know. Have you have you traveled uh the four days a week or >> Well, I haven't had that kind of schedule, but I traveled to a lot of different places as the dean of the high school. >> Yeah. >> Talked to alumni, talked to potential students. >> So, I guess you understand on the road gets gets difficult sometimes. And I didn't even have a family. I was 23 or 24. >> Um so, I did a year there. Amazing opportunity. Met people who I still talk to today. And I was actually having a conversation before this with your staff. Um, we talk about networking at the high school and the importance of networking uh when when you're in the high school, when you're out of the high school, but one of the key pieces I think that I'd love to work with you more on too is networking. When you're in a role, right, when you get into a role after you graduate college, you have to network within the company. >> Yep. >> Right. That's your next network. >> Yep. You have your alumni base who can help guide, support, mentor, refer, but when you get in a position, you need to be getting one-on- ones with all your cross functional partners, right? And I think that's the key to success in movement within a company or movement outside of a company, right? It's who do I have as strong partners in my job? Do they trust me to do my job? Are they going to be giving me good per performance reviews? I mean that's the reality right when you get when you get a performance review part of it is your manager but your peers also give you reviews so how do I have strong peers right and that actually you know before I get to where I am today I had really strong peers at Deote strong leaders in senior manager manager and partner very involved now I got recruited via LinkedIn to go to Meta they were starting a new privacy program there I spent three years there. Um, well, actually there's a couple Syracuse grats there as well and we would connect in the company. Um, and then from Meta, I went to an AI startup for a year and tried to ride the AI wave. Now, why I'm saying all this is that the reason why I'm in the position I am today is because my former manager from Deote was starting a new cyber program at McDonald's Corp. >> Yeah. So that internal networking what I what I'll call friendship almost right you're friends with the people you work with the people >> it's a professional it's professional but it's also friendship like these relationships can be kind of multifaceted >> yeah you're not messaging them on LinkedIn you're calling them because you've worked with them before you're texting them hey what are you doing next um and I saw a LinkedIn post for a senior manager role and I had called up my former manager and he was very excited that I was interested and that's where I've been for the last year and a half. So the reason why I go through that entire aspect is that besides the recruit recruitment [snorts] for meta in a large program they were growing every role that I have been in has been some sort of connection back to either the high school in Syracuse or to my former colleagues and I think that's really important. >> Yeah. This is a story that you know that I hope all of our students hear. Yeah. >> Right. Because so in my research, I actually study social networks. And the network you're describing is kind of a a network of clusters, right? You have the high school students that you originally students with. You have a whole cluster of those. You get to a job, you connect to more people on LinkedIn, you've got a cluster there, then you've got a cluster at the next job. So, you know, I have multiple clusters at this stage in my profession. >> Absolutely. And you never know where a job is going to come from. You never know who you can help get a job, right? Like these networks are super important. >> I think you you hit on something that's incredibly important. And I'm I'm going to go above and beyond what you said and say you never know what your next job's going to be or if it's even created yet. >> Yeah. >> Because when I went to Fidelity Investments, the data engineering program was new. When I went into the cyber role at Fidelity, CCPA and GDPR and the sense of having an analyst in that role was new. It was a new role. U at Deote privacy consulting, they were just spinning up a huge privacy data data protection consulting practice. They had had that before, but the new roles were the ones that I had an AI startup, right? I mean the company had been around but AI privacy the concept of how do we keep AI on guard rails? How do we talk about uh hallucinations? How do we talk about where our data is? What an LLM has access to. It was all very new, right? And then coming into McDonald's, our whole org is new, right? We had used third party consulting practices before. We hired a new CISO from externally who's an amazing amazing leader. His name is Mike Gordon. Um, and he said, "We want to hire within." So, they started this new org. So, it's it's funny sometimes when people ask me, you know, what job do you think I'd fit in? Where like, you know, if I'm if I'm mentoring either current students, grad students, or people early on in their career, it's like, don't pinpoint exactly what job you want to fit in because you don't know what new jobs will come up. So, don't pigeon yourself into, oh, I want to be an analyst in this specific area. have a bright o open mind of like hey next year there's going to be something in AI or we know quantum computing is coming you know we know data centers are being built everywhere you know what what is the next new job that's coming >> so I want to come back to that but I also want to take a minute to kind of set some context so tell us about your job right now like what does that look like what is your what's your official title what's your role like >> when you go to What do you and your team do? >> Great question. Um, when I first started at McDonald's and what I'm doing now is different. When I first started at McDonald's as a senior manager of global data, so same title but different different structures of the wider cyber security aspect. So when I first started, I worked on data classification and retention in the unstructured data aspect. So what I mean by unstructured is things like M365, uh, email, Excel, uh, Jira. So things that are unstructured in and rows and columns and easier to query, etc., and understanding the security around that. So I had a team that reported to me um that that works in Chicago talking about classification labeling. Give an example. We pushed out classification email to email, right? How do I understand when I'm sending you an email or I'm sending you a Teams message or I'm using Microsoft Copilot? What sort of data I'm consuming or attaching or have access to, right? So, making sure the right people have access to the right data, but that we're classifying where data is because how can you could put controls around something that you don't know the classification of that data. >> Right. >> Right. So we we have launched that and and some someone has taken over that team um from me because you know I I had moved to a new team someone had left the company actually two people have left the company um and I got asked to take over a um another team that that's in a really cool area called DSPM so data security posture management and what we do there and and and specifically for me being being a leader of the team is I I oversee a manager who I'll say is on the ground doing the work with the team and a few analysts for remediations of cloud data security using some pretty large vendors and pretty well-known vendors to understand where our critical vulnerabilities are from a database and data perspective. So you know the use of AWS which is Amazon's cloud and GCP which is Google's cloud and Microsoft which is Azra's cloud we use all of them right. Um so when it comes to vulnerability, when it comes to overprivileged access, there are large vendors in the space that we use to help us with alerting and my team specifically works with the application team. So software engineers, data scientists, DBAs to help remediate those remediations and make sure that we have lessons learned to understand and make sure those vulnerabilities don't pop up again. Okay. So [clears throat] now you've worked at a number of different companies and I imagine that it's almost like different companies have different security flavors. >> Can you talk a little bit about that about how your job now is is really really different and your focus is different compared to what it was at other places? >> I think the easiest way of saying that is that companies have different priorities. >> Yeah. Uh at Meta it's move fast and break things which is tough to be a person in privacy trying to protect things when everyone else is trying to break that exact product. Mhm. >> Um the priorities at Meta were constant reorggs. So aligning teams in different ways for the new products, right? So give an example. I remember India banning Tik Tok and then our priority was Facebook reels. Instagram reels was still very popular. But we had this opportunity to reinvent the Facebook app and bring short form video to the Facebook app. But from a settings, from a privacy, from a data use perspective, how do we make sure things are locked down? How do we make sure we're not using public data for AI models, which I know is changed these days. At McDonald's, it's more protecting the brand. >> And what I may what I mean by that is I have a lot of friends who oftentimes and say, "What are you securing at McDonald's?" And they and they make fun of me. Are you are you securing the food and the delivery trucks and and they and it's it's that they know obviously I don't do that. But if you think about McDonald's as a brand, we're in 120 countries. We are if you just if you just look at that, the amount of different regulations we have, >> yeah, >> is insane. We have 70 million customers a day. The you know, our revenue is something in the billions each quarter. So when you think of people trying to access information, what do they want, right? They want money and they want data and they want to expose companies. >> Yeah. >> I mean it comes down to maybe a few more things but those are those are the aspects and McDonald's as a brand is pretty large well-known brand. So if I'm an ethical not an ethical hacker and if I'm trying to breach into a company and I think of what companies to do, I mean McDonald's has data in 120 different countries and the amount of data that we have is incredible. I mean it's also incredible for the customer experience. We're now leveraging our McDonald's app and we have a goal by 2027 to have 250 million loyalty customers. My personal opinion is that we'll crush that. The reason why is that I think we already have 150 million, but the it's it's our it's our reach. Everyone knows what McDonald's is and everyone has probably been there at some point, especially when you're thinking of road trips, right? Where else are you gonna go when it comes to fast food? I mean, I know there's the Burger Kings and Wendy's of the world, but the brand recognition is off the charts. I think we're the eighth well-known brand by Forbes in the world >> when it comes to brand recognition. So what I mean by that and kind of just going back to what I said before is Meta was move back brace move fast break things and we had an FTC consent order we were abiding by McDonald's is how do we protect the brand? How do we make sure that we're not on the the news that we're >> uh not securing data? How do we make sure that our networks are up? That our technology works, that we can get people in and out of McDonald's as fast as possible. And one of the big things comes AI, right? And I'm sure we'll talk about that a little more, but everyone thinks AI is coming to take everyone's job, especially when it comes to fast food. What I hear from my leadership is not is not that they want to move faster. >> Use the same people but give them tools. >> Yeah. >> To get more people through. >> It's going to make it's going to make companies more competitive. >> Yes. >> So yeah. So let's go to that for now. So um so you briefly mentioned new jobs. One of the things that I think about a lot when I think about AI is, yeah, some jobs are going to go away, but when the internet came up, there were new jobs that materialized that people hadn't thought of before. Like a web developer did not exist before the worldwide web, >> right? >> So, you guys are probably thinking about that. What kinds of new jobs can you imagine on the horizon that didn't exist that don't exist right now? It's a good question. I think there's a couple different aspects of that. Um, right now we are seeing new jobs in the AI sector. Um, and I think we're going to continue to see, you know, we we keep hearing this responsible AI aspect, right? >> And there's a difference between responsible AI and securing AI. Responsible AI is understanding should we how do we what I'm seeing now when it comes to a large companywide is that AI is then secured by the cyber security teams but we will need experts in AI to secure that data. So what I see coming is enforcement and guardrail specific teams around LMS. So if you're going to be using Chat GBT Enterprise, if you're going to be using Copilot, if you're going to be using Anthropic, which I know the university has a huge partnership with, >> really the inputs and outputs of that in securing the information, >> I think we're going to see more AI security specialist roles and I think we're going to see a blend of data AI and data governance roles to understand how to push the business to utilize it but not go past the line of being less careful and possibility of new breaches today. I mean give an example today breaches happens in servers that that aren't patched or happens with fishing emails. I think tomorrow it's going to be you put some confidential information into a LM model that LM model then leaks and then someone else can use that data. So I think the form of I think I I believe it still is number one form of hacking is fishing emails but I think we're getting more sophisticated there with vendor tools with training um the these new aspects of hey I want to create a presentation and give you all the information and have you build it for me. You don't really have that filter. It's you prompt. there's no filter telling you not to put confidential information in a >> so it's an interesting aspect of >> how to build >> I think a lot of people that are really new to security don't realize how much of security is people dependent and I think that's one of the places AI is going to really make things challenging for you guys because I can use AI to do analysis of people >> and that may help me in my fishing efforts Yeah. Yeah. I mean, understanding behaviors. I mean, if you know Yeah. Yes. I mean, if you're using an AI chatbot, the behavior of you as a dean, I bet you that chatbot pretty easily knows that you're the dean without knowing you're the dean. >> Yeah. >> Not to get you scared. >> So, in our [laughter] case, in our case, we have uh uh we have our data locked down within the the university. So if I use claude >> y >> then >> we own all that data. >> So we were just talking about how how people are a key aspect of security at your company. How do you build a culture of security so that McDonald's protects its own data? >> Something we're I I think I I think we're reimagining and rethinking right now. uh with all these new tools and when I say tools I mean AI and I also mean vendor tools there are if you look out today there are the amount of vendor new new uh funding for series A series B and above beyond startups and vendors trying to sell to major companies is more than it's ever been a part of that is the AI boom a part of that is the cyber security boom But how do we make sure that the business and making money is always going to be a priority but how do we make sure people know that the protection of the business is also a close priority. >> We can't have the brand without protecting the brand. >> I think we we've started to do trainings um the yearly trainings. We're doing lunch and learns talking about different cyber security aspects. But I think more now than ever, I'm working with the business side, the marketing team, the teams who know what's going to happen before the public knows what's going to happen. I >> think we've seen this a lot with leaks, right? So, how do we lock if we know we're doing a give Monopoly for example, we just launched Monopoly. If that came out and our competitors found out about that a year before we were doing it, that wouldn't be good for our brand, >> right? >> Um, and a piece of that is making sure the information is locked down and the databases where the information are locked down and that the people are also aware that they need to be trusted. >> How do you do that part? >> Because that part right there, that's the cultural part, right? Like there's so you can do trainings, you can even do fishing of your own people to see if they click a link. Like I know that's kind of a thing that companies do. >> What does that look like for you guys? >> I think for me it's partnership, trust, and getting closer to the business side >> so that I am a partner to the business. I am not the brakes. If you're in a business role or a marketing role or a money a revenue role, a lot of times in the past, you didn't want to talk to the cyber guy. You didn't want to talk to the privacy guy because he's going to try to slow you down. >> Yep. >> Where I don't want to be seen, and this is what I think we're trying to do from a culture perspective, we don't want to be seen as that. We want to be seen as one team. We want to be there what we call privacy shift left or cyber shift left or privacy by design. We want to be there from the start working with the teams. And I think it's a process problem. In the past, cyber and privacy came at the 23rd hour before you're going to push something out. And that's not McDonald's specific. That's just industry specific. How can we be there on day one with the people to make sure they know the importance of cyber privacy and all the things that we're handling with? And I think a piece of that is comparing it to what's happening in the world. all the time you see leaks, all the time you see hacks, and you can use some of those lessons learned and give real life examples to your team says, "Hey, this is what we're trying to avoid and and make that connection to what has actually happened in in real life." >> Okay, so I'm going to switch gears. I'm going to go back to the high school. >> Let's do it. I love it. And one of the things that I that I like to talk to people about is in the time that you've been a professional, technology has changed actually quite a lot. >> A lot. >> How do you keep up? And particularly, has the high school helped you? Has it put you in a position so that it's kind of natural to keep up or is it a challenge all the time? >> I think one of the things I always loved about the high school is the elective classes. for like the real um the in the- moment scenarios. The the reason why I bring this class up again because I think it was my favorite class was database security class and we went over the the active Home Depot Sony target hacks that happened like six months ago, six months prior to that. >> Yeah. >> So the high school kept me up to date on what was happening in the real world while I was here during the four years. I mean, you look back at even the first class you take at the high school 185 with Jeff Rubin, who's a a close friend and what I'll call colleague at this point because I I love talking to him about universitywide technologies and and even the high school specifically, his class changes every single year. >> Yeah. >> And the ability for the high school to continue to rapidly change yearly gives us as grads the opportunity to do that in the workforce. Now, there are things like The Verge and Tech Crutch and very real time news outlets that actually I found out in in high school classes that I still use today. >> Yeah. >> And that's how I keep up. At this point, though, it's almost impossible to keep up. >> There's so much going on. But there are really cool newsletters out there too which which I've I've used in the past um to understand what are the current Home Depot target Sony's what is happening who's getting breached where and at this point it's how many not who. >> Yeah. >> And what do they do wrong? And I think that's really cool. I'm not I don't read many books to be honest. I I am an article tech article junkie. I say I get into Reddit or The Verge or TechCrunch and I go down a path of what happened here? What tools do we have? How are we actually mitigating this risk? And a lot of times I'll share the public articles internally with my teams and say look at this like you know this is why we do what we do. that not only one reaffirms why they have a job but also gives them a little bit of a morale boost and like >> oh wow I think we're covering that here. Um, but I think the I I think Jeff just came out with some IT newsletter as well, um, which I read when he sends out and I appreciate all of this because without these avenues and without being built from 18 to 22 and the mindset of everything's changing, it'd be really hard to keep up today. >> Yeah, >> it'd be really hard. >> Yeah. One of the things that um that a lot of alumni tell me is is that an high school degree helped them not be attached to a you know a current technology but really help them so that they could pivot all the time to new technology to think about technology kind of as just a set of tools and those tools are going to change all the time. >> That's 100%. I see it as we used to call and I don't know if we still call it but the intersection of business and technology >> but it goes beyond that which is why we may not call that anymore but it's understanding data right most of the classes we teach here talk about data and the importance of data data powers everything couldn't have AI without data couldn't have revenue without data Yeah, these days that's certainly true. Maybe 50 years ago it was not a thing but >> so but then the aspect of data powering everything and the importance of governance security analytics behind that data and then the classes that we teach here and we have you know information security track for concentration. So how do you protect the data? I think I believe we have a data analytics track now. Mhm. >> How do you manipulize the data and use the data for business aspects? Um, and I would love to do other data governance aspects here and talk to you more about that, but the importance of securing data has never been more important and it's only going to become more important. I mean, you look at the self-driving cars. How do we think self-driving cars work? They are collecting data every single second about the roads and people beyond them. Where's that data going? What is that powering? >> Yeah, insurance companies are certainly starting to develop apps so they can sort of see how you're driving >> and then it that can affect your rates and certainly people talk about Facebook, you know, they're making their money >> from data, >> all data, >> right? So, so yeah, that's that's the world we live in these days. Okay. So, this is the world we live in. Think about two or three things. If I was going to ask you two or three things that you want to tell people that are graduating right now, what would that be? I think the first would be be flexible and adaptable. Companies these days are making layoffs. They're doing reorgs, but they're still innovating. And a lot of young grads I'm seeing are being in a role for a year like myself, then doing something different and then in a role for a year and doing something different. And I think it there's stress that comes with >> sure >> new job, new manager, etc. Getting used to that earlier on will help you. Give an example. I've been in what is eight different roles now and I've been out for 10 years. Four or five different companies but eight different roles. So I think the first one's being flexible and adaptable and understanding that a lot of this isn't under your control. If your boss is telling you, hey, we want you to come over here. That's just reality. Don't go against the grain. Go with it. whether you think it's a good decision or not, do your best to be in that new opportunity, get your network and do well in that role. [snorts] The second piece I think is what we talked about before and understanding that your high school network and your alumni network needs to go into the network in your career. When I get into a new role or if I'm mentoring someone and they're in a new role, the first week they should be in one-on- ones all week, understanding who everyone is, getting their face in front of everyone, understanding their roles, documenting it down so that when they need something or they need help or they need feedback, they know who to go to and they can start to align their strategic crossunctional partners. The reality today is that you can't if you can't work with crossunctional partners, you're not going to do very well. I don't care if you're a heads down software engineer, you're going to be working with other software engineers. >> And I think the third one is continue to learn. >> Yeah. >> If you're in a role and you're not learning, don't leave the role, but start to look and understand what's next. Understand, am I getting everything out of this role? Am I learning more? Am I challenging myself? Because that's where I think the differences of changing roles is I have anxiety because I want a new role. Getting that new role is really hard. Once I get that new role, do I think it's actually going to be better? I think yes. I don't think I've ever changed roles and regretted it. There are roles that I've like disliked less or more. But if you're learning something new, whatever it is, that's key. So continue learning. Learning doesn't stop because you're not in class anymore. >> Yeah. There's two things that sort of come to mind as you talk. One is this phrase we use called lifelong learners, right? Like you read articles all the time >> and that actually helps you professionally, right? That keeps you kind of on the edge. It keeps you aware of what's out there and what's going on. That's learning, right? You're constantly learning. >> Um [cough] [clears throat] the other is opportunity. So, you know, when you switch roles, there's always another opportunity in front of you. Some people are more opportunistic than others. But I can think of these things as stressful changes or I can think of them as opportunities, right? This is an opportunity for growth. >> Um, there's a lot of layoffs in the world. That's just kind of the way that corporations work. Um, I was laid off years and years and years ago. I used to work for company called Semantic and you know we went through layoffs. The thing is is that created an opportunity for me right like in the moment it was frightening it was scary but it led to a better job. >> Yeah. >> And it opened doors for me that otherwise I wasn't paying attention to so those are all opportunities. Yes. This I think networks are the key thing is one of the key things that our graduates that our students right now should be paying attention to. Make those networks. Shake hands with people. Introduce yourself. Connect on LinkedIn. I tell my students all the time. Send me a send me an invite. I'm happy to connect with you on LinkedIn. >> I think one thing you hit on that I wanted to hit on today that's outside of the technology realm realm is the stress of the world. >> Yeah. It's I would say more stressful than ever. Um, and that's not for new grads. That's someone who's 10 years out. Just the changing of the world. And I I I think it's important. We always talk about networking. We talk about getting good grades. We talk about getting jobs, but I think there's a mental health aspect to it. >> Sure. >> That is super important. You talked about the stress of a new role or a layoff. There are things in life, in your career that are up to you. Leaving your current job and moving to a new job, that's up to you. Getting a reorg, being told that you're going to be in a different place, that's not up to you. getting laid off. People think I'm going to be a top performer. I won't I will never get laid off. If you look at my old privacy team, there are some of the best performers I've ever worked with in my life that were laid off at Meta. That's not up to you. So, mental health health aspect and understanding the difference of something that's up to me and something that I have no control over is super important. And it took me a long time to understand this, but no matter what happens, and I want to connect to what you said, there will always be new opportunities. We live in a world where things are changing and new roles, even though there are layoffs, new roles are happening every year because we live in a world where technology is conquering everything. So because you get laid off, as you mentioned, isn't And I mean isn't the end of the world. Obviously, there's a financial piece of it. There's a stress of that. But you should see it not as I'm mad at the former company. I'm mad I could have done better. That's in the past. There's nothing else you can do. You can move forward. Use your high school connections, use your internal connections, use LinkedIn and get a new opportunity. And you find that many cases, as you mentioned, someone goes on a new road path and they look back and say, "Why was I so stressed? for things that I couldn't control. So I think understanding that earlier in your career and I wish I understood that at earlier in my career is there are things that I can control and there are things I have I could stress every night. I could I could never sleep for for a year. Am I going to have a job when I wake up? Or I could go to the job every day, do the best I can, know that if I get laid off, it may not be my control under my control. and then utilize friends and my [snorts] what I'll call my my inner circle, right, which is important to make sure that I have support when those bad things happen. But a lot of times you you you end up better than you were. You find a new thing you didn't think you liked. So those new opportunities that come from what I'll call negative moments. It's a part of life. If if if life was happy and everyone got new roles every day, there there'd be no emotions. There'd be no ups and downs, right? >> Yeah. Yeah. The ups come because there are downs. >> Absolutely. >> So what are you excited about? Like if you're looking at the technological landscape, what what is what's coming up that makes you excited and particularly if you can put that in the context of security and your profession? >> Yeah, I think is it specific to my role or specific to the high school? Spec specific to my role. I'm super excited to start we're pushing out our technologies to what we call to the markets. So dealing with the Germans, the Australia, the different countries where where McDonald's is. Um, and I'm really excited to work with different cultures, with different people in the way they learn. Um, and push out some really cool technologies to them that are like pretty innovative for some of these places. Um, I think the future of the high school I'm super excited for is the use of data in AI and how to secure that, which I'd love to talk to you more about. What courses are going to be here in two to three years where we're talking about AI database security or LLM security or LLM data governance or how to secure a open-source LLM, right? And I think one of the things that's come up and I thought would hit before AI is the quantum computing aspect. something that I think has been put on the back burner because it's a it's a couple years away. >> Yeah. >> And this new AI thing has come, but quantum computing is still coming. And with quantum computing and AI together, >> right? I >> mean, you're talking about some of the fastest ways to manipulate and create data known to man >> and put robotics in there, too, >> right? >> Yeah. So, I'm just going to kind of go into that a little bit. You know, we're excited because we have a new graduate degree in AI. We have a an undergraduate minor in AI and we're thinking about pushing those boundaries even further. So, we're going to be exploring different degree opportunities and other things. Um, it's an exciting moment and it's a moment of change certainly because AI is changing so fast. Like really five years ago this was on our horizon but it wasn't it wasn't something that you know >> anybody could even imagine what was going to come next right so it's changing really fast >> so if we design a degree program right now what's it going to look like in three years or five years right it's going to be completely different >> different >> what kinds of classes are students going to need what is the landscape going to look like before we were just talking about how you know the worldwide web created a job that didn't exist before that job created. In five years, there are going to be job opportunities that we can't imagine at this moment. So, it's a it's a challenging moment to figure out where we need to position ourselves and where we need to position our students. Luckily, we have faculty who have incredibly pivoted towards AI in ways that probably won't surprise you as somebody who graduated from the high school, but people outside the high school may not realize that AI impacts so many different things that >> almost all of our faculty have turned to that and said, "How is that impacting my space? What can I do? How can I introduce this into my classes?" You know, I I talked to um high school teachers and not universally, but there's plenty of people that are just like, "We're forbidding our students to look at AI." But in our classes, we're like, "Look, here's how you can use AI to do this." And to me, that's exciting, right? Science schools have always been on the cutting edge of technology, and we'll continue to innovate and be on that edge. and we'll continue to have conversations with people like you because I think that you can bring back the industry perspective that helps us tune our classes for the future. >> Yeah. And I think I think it's the right way to go. Absolutely. 100%. Right. The innovation that has occurred in the partnership with Anthropic at Syracuse is extremely exciting to see. I was very excited to hear about it and the acceptance of it I was also excited to hear about. I mean the reality is students are going to use it whether you like it or not. So why not embrace that? >> More than that [clears throat] really more than that tomorrow's information professionals need to know how to use AI to be competitive. >> Absolutely. I mean I use it I'll say I use it five to six times a day. I mean, we're we're we're a large co-pilot partner, so we have co-pilot. Um, all of them are pretty similar. >> One of the things that I think is really interesting and what's going to happen in a few years is companies are still trying to figure out how to use it. Large corporations. >> Yep. >> Now, we can use it as a staff level and it's going to help us on a day-to-day, but companies want to use it to make more money. >> Yeah. >> Right. And that's the reality. And I think we're not I don't think companies are there yet. They're not I think I think I just saw an article that 90% of companies that were surveyed said they haven't actually profited yet from the use of AI for revenue purposes. I think there's a big profit for staff and enhancements, but when you look at the profits for are we making more money because of the use of AI at the corporate level, it's not quite there yet. So that's next to come. How is AI going to be leveraged to help revenue increase? >> You know what I think about though is that it it's almost like there's going to be an arms race. Like there's an arm race in security between bad actors and folks that are protecting systems, right? Well, as companies ramp up with AI, if they ramp up all evenly, there may not actually be revenue gains because the competition will just be more and more fierce. [laughter] The companies that decide where there's going to be profit taking is the companies that are slow and can't compete and can't figure out how to use AI. You know, capitalist societies have a way of dealing with it. Those companies go away. The interesting part here is we talk about AI so much every day now and the large corporations are using it but as you mentioned you know the medium the small corporations haven't even begun the start of it you look at Syracuse as the local economy it's a pretty industrial town you know Carrier used to be here. I'm from Syracuse, which is why I'm saying this. Um, and give an example. My father works for a company called Seal Master, a large corporation. And I asked him, hey, are you using AI? Hey, haven't even looked at it yet. And I think it's important to understand that though these large companies are moving fast, where's the rest of the world? Where's the people who are 35 to 70 who are in the workforce that didn't go to the high school that don't have a technology background? >> Yeah. >> What how how are they going to adapt? >> Yeah. And a lot of them aren't and they're going to hold companies back. >> I think that's key. >> So, this is pretty much all we've got time for. I want to thank you for joining us today. >> Always love coming and seeing you. >> I really enjoyed this chat. I hope that the folks listening really enjoyed it. I imagine they will. >> Absolutely. Thanks. Appreciate you, Jeeoff. >> Yeah. Have a good one. >> You, too.