The Potential of AI in Academia with Clemson University CISO John Hoyt

Enterprise Software Defenders

On the 8th episode of Enterprise Software Defenders, hosts Evan Reiser and Mike Britton, both executives at Abnormal Security, talk with John Hoyt, Chief Information Security Officer at Clemson University. As a college and premier research institution founded in 1889, Clemson has over 28,000 students, nearly 6,000 faculty and staff, and operates a small city - leading to complex security and technology challenges. In this conversation, John discusses unique security requirements at Clemson, the evolving role of AI in cybersecurity, and the transformative potential of AI in academia.
Quick hits from John:
On the unique security requirements at Clemson: “It's a small city. We do have everything going on. You have researchers and students that live on your network. You have a power plant, you have water treatment, you have a police department, you've got everything. And you are trying to secure all of that and keep tabs on it.“
On AI’s potential to help with threat detection on larger networks: “So how do you keep up with all those pieces to look for unusual patterns? You have to understand what normal is. And it helps you to be like a human intrusion detection engine. When you know, you have looked at these logs a thousand times and so “this” log stands out. And having AI help you with that for your organization is a bit scary, but I do think it is possible already. It is just something connecting those dots to help you.”
On AI’s ability to give defenders an upper hand: “I think that we can get into setting traps for adversaries, like honeypots. It gets me excited the more we can do that. I've done a bit of that with some of these folks that are trying to scam our students. I sent them some documents with canary tokens, those are really interesting. AI could help us enhance that because it's a pain to manage and troubleshoot those things. But I like the proactive defense, where you're not just waiting for the bad thing to happen.”
Book Recommendation: Storyworthy by Matthew Dicks
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Enterprise Software Defenders is a show where top security executives share how moves to the cloud have created an evolved threat landscape that requires new tools to protect against cybercrime. Find more great lessons from tech leaders and enterprise software experts at https://www.enterprisesoftware.blog/
Enterprise Software Defenders is produced by Josh Meer.