Albena Asenova-Belal is a cybersecurity instructor at Gwinnett Technical College with a diverse background in engineering, data analysis, and education.
Summary of the episode
Albena Asenova-Belal discusses how the college’s award-winning cybersecurity program is empowering the next generation of cyber defenders. The program is NSA and DHS-accredited, ensuring the curriculum aligns with the skills needed to succeed in the field. Students gain hands-on experience through simulation labs and competitions, with Gwinnett Tech students recently winning gold medals at SkillsUSA.
The program emphasizes soft skills and mentorship, as well as leveraging advisory boards to stay current with industry needs. She also shares advice for students looking to enter the cybersecurity field, highlighting the importance of finding the right fit based on personality and interests. She also discusses emerging trends, including the growing role of AI, and the need for students to develop an understanding of these technologies.
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Read a full transcript of the episode
Steven Bowcut:
Welcome to the Cybersecurity Guide Podcast where we explore academic pathways and career opportunities in the ever evolving world of cybersecurity.
I’m your host, Steven Bowcut and this episode is titled Empowering Future Cyber Defenders Inside Gwinnett Tech’s Award-winning Cybersecurity program. Today I’m excited to welcome a guest whose career spans continents, disciplines and decades of impact in education and technology.
Dr. Albena as Nova Bal is a cybersecurity adjunct instructor at Gwinnett Technical College and a lecturer of information technology with a PhD in Electrotechnology from the Technical University of Sofia and a master’s in cybersecurity from Southern Polytechnic State University, Dr. Anova Bal brings a rare blend of academic depth and industry insight to her work.
Her professional journey includes roles as a data analyst, engineer, consultant, lab manager, and educator. With over a decade of service at Gwinnett Tech, she has served as program director for the cybersecurity program, coordinated student success initiatives and mentored champions of skills, USA competitions, her work with Prometrics and McGraw Hill. McGraw Hill Education also reflects her leadership in shaping certification standards and educational resources for the broader cybersecurity field.
In today’s conversation, we’ll explore what makes Gwinnett Tech’s cybersecurity program one of the best in the country, how hands-on education is shaping the next generation of cyber professionals and what advice Dr. Anova Bilal has for students looking to break into this exciting and high demand field. With that welcome albena. Thank you for joining me today.
Albena Asenova-Belal:
Hello. Thank you for having me. I’m really excited to this podcast with you.
Steven Bowcut:
You’re welcome. This is going to be fun. I’m looking forward to learning what’s going on at Gwinnett and what students could expect if they decided to get their cybersecurity education there.
But before we get started with that, let’s learn a little bit more about you as we like to do on this show. We like to get our guests to tell us a little bit about how you got to where you’re at.
So share your journey into cybersecurity and information technology and what inspired you to transition from engineering and data analysis where you worked into cybersecurity education.
Albena Asenova-Belal:
Thank you for that question. Yeah, this is really interesting story actually about the cybersecurity in general. I always wanted to be in the IT field even before I started my electrical engineering journey in my country. However, there my parents didn’t like it at that point.
IT field in that time was very questionable what opportunities are, but engineer, everybody feel proud to have an engineer at home. Sure, absolutely. So I kind of was pushed to do the engineering, which I also like, but I always have a tendency to link to the IT field.
So when I came to the United States, when I immigrated with my family 20 years ago, exactly this year, I decided at one point to finish my IT degree. But what exactly point me to the cybersecurity was actually as funny as the sound. I was actually hacked my bank account.
Steven Bowcut:
Oh no.
Albena Asenova-Belal:
When we came to America was hacked and we talk about 2007 when I didn’t really know any better at that time, I receive a email looks like from my bank, it said click on that link.
Steven Bowcut:
Oh no.
Albena Asenova-Belal:
And then the next thing I know, the little money we have, me and my husband in our bank account was poof gun. Thankfully for the bank, I don’t want to say names to not make promotions, but the bank was very helpful. They make their research, they found out the money was taken from some other state, which we really never went there because we were newly immigrants with not too many resources.
But even they were trying to take more money that we actually have. They work with us, we talk about checking account, not a credit card. At that time, we didn’t really have credit cards, still didn’t build our credit here, and they return our money at one point, but it takes time and if you don’t have any other resources was really rough for us as a newly immigrant to the United States.
So now when that happened, I really decided to specialize in cybersecurity and at that time when I start my degree in Southern Politic, actually now it’s Kennesaw State University in Marietta. They merged with Southern Polytech exactly when I graduated. So it’s not there anymore, but it’s Kennesaw State at this point.
When I start there, I talked to my faculty advisor at that time that I was assigned to and I told her I want to do cybersecurity at that time, actually information security in 2012, cybersecurity wasn’t even a award yet.
Steven Bowcut:
Exactly.
Albena Asenova-Belal:
I said, I want to do specialize in information security and artificial intelligence. And luckily she was a lady from Russia, I’m still in contact with her now. She tried to recruit me to go teach there in Kennesaw because she really was impressed from my performance.
So she said, okay, that’s what I’m teaching. That’s what my specialties and points of researchers are and I’ll be happy to have you. So I really was very fortunate to have her as well and start learning. But as you know, the cybersecurity field is very evolving. So at that time was information security. Then now cyber things are changing all the times. You have to constantly, constantly learn and that’s what I like. I’m a lifelong learner.
My father make joke with me. He’s like, what you want to do with all these degrees? You want to make a soup from it. But I just like to know how things are put together and especially with cybersecurity, that’s how everything happened. I tell you that question. That’s it.
Steven Bowcut:
That is so interesting. I’m sorry that wasn’t much of a welcome to America getting your bank account hacked, but I’m glad it turned out the way that it did. So now we have a prominent cybersecurity instructor in our country, so thank you for that.
So let’s focus a little bit on Gwinnett. So Gwinnett Tech cybersecurity program, it’s NSA and DHA.. DHS accredited and has recently earned some national recognition. So what makes this program stand out and have you seen any changes since you’ve been there on how the program has evolved?
Albena Asenova-Belal:
I want to say just few words. Few words about Gwinnet Tech. Gwinnett Tech was our first college when we immigrated here, like I said, so many degrees before I started with Kennesaw, I actually finished an associate in drafting mechanical architecture, drafting in Gwinnett Tech because we just want to stay in the country as newly immigrants. We didn’t know much better.
So Gwinnett Tech was very attached to me and my husband actually. We start with English and second language students there and then transition to full time. So it’s really interesting how when you are a student there and then we become teachers.
Now my husband is still there, he’s a program director on humanity and music appreciation. Just completely different field. But we were attached to this college so much and we have so many faculty that help us to be where we are today. So for us, in a way is paying forward.
And because of that, when I started, because I had so many hats in Gwinnet tech, I started and have so many job careers there. But the last one before I left was the cybersecurity program director, which we are talking about. And at that time when I started this cybersecurity program director position, we were in a way of transitioning to be NSA and DHS accredited, which is academic excellence.
That means the program is aligned with all the necessary skills the students need to have according to National Security Agency and Department of Security framework. So I start going through so many conferences, cybersecurity conferences, which are only for colleges, four year and two year colleges that either is about to be a creator or already are a creator is in a way it’s by invitation. Not everybody can be to these conferences because there we have a lot of people from FBI, NSA, Department of Defense, DHS, and they are sharing with us. We have so many workshops and they’re sharing with us what skills our students and graduates need to have in order to get into those fields.
So that is very important as a program, especially in cybersecurity, especially when everything evolves so fast, the hackers are always abreast from us and we really, really need to know what skills we have to have and they change every year. I can tell that for sure. Sometimes say, okay, they need to know more about something in the field, but then next year say, forget about this, now they need to know more about this.
So we always need to align the curriculum in our classes with the needs out there and those conferences and workshops during that conference. Actually, it is very important. It happen every year and we need to work and revamp the curriculum in our classes.
Steven Bowcut:
Excellent.
Albena Asenova-Belal:
As a cybersecurity program, I have 11 classes in that program that I need to work on the curriculum literally every year.
Steven Bowcut:
So what that means then for students or students is that Gwinnett Tech is getting input from NSA and DHS on these are the things that people need to know if they want to work in the security field and particularly if they want to work for government agencies.
I assume that that would be even more applicable if you’re interested in working for government agencies, you need to know these things and that’s why it changes, right? Because the NSA and the DHS, they have their pulse on what’s going on with the threat actors, how the threats are evolving and changing and what tools and strategies are being used.
Albena Asenova-Belal:
Exactly.
Steven Bowcut:
And so they know what the students need to learn to defend against that. So very good. I appreciate that. That’s very helpful. One of the things that I noted is that your students had recently won some gold medals at the SkillsUSA competition. I just wanted to get your input. How do you feel about those kinds of competitions and what do you do to prepare students to do well in these kinds of competitions?
Albena Asenova-Belal:
Well, those competitions are very important. It’s something that the students will experience in a real-world environment. So when we prepare the students, we of course we use tools that are already in a platform of different publishers that we used to for the curriculum for the classes. So we don’t actually hack different website because we don’t want FBI on our door, of course.
But those tools and those simulation labs that we use are very close because of these conferences and aligning the curriculum every year, they’re very close to what is out there in the field. So that’s how our students got trained by us. Most likely it was me and my cybersecurity team of faculty in Gwinnett Tech.
So we were working with the students using our simulation labs from our classes, from the curriculum in our classes to prepare them for the skillsUSA competitions.
And those are very important for several reasons. First, the students are experiencing those real world examples through simulation labs. Second, they experiencing the competition itself because in the cybersecurity field, in a way it’s as a competition.
So you need to compete to find and get the hacker faster or resolve the problem because it can cost companies millions of doors when they being hacked and lose their assets. And also the students that are there and perform good. We have so many employers right on the floor there. So I have situation happen that the students in a way were hard right away because of their performance.
Those employers are actually walking around and even while the students were competing, they’re watching, depending what field they’re interested in, they’re watching and they see how they perform and after that, they contact with me or directly with the student.
And some students get jobs even before they graduate, but usually those competitions are the students that are almost graduating because you need to have certain skills and be in depth in the curriculum in order to compete.
Steven Bowcut:
So yeah, so it’s a great job or could potentially be a good job placement activity for a graduating student to do well in one of those competitions. So you’ve got scouts from the different companies out there seeing who knows what and what they’re doing. I love that idea.
And a couple of things you just mentioned there, kind of go back to this idea of hands-on learning with some disciplines. I guess it’s okay to learn a lot of theory and in theory is important, you need to understand why things work the way they work. But it seems to me that in cybersecurity it’s critical and essential that you have some hands on experience.
So can you talk a little bit more about that? If a student was to come to Gwinnett, what could they expect as it relates to hands-on work?
Albena Asenova-Belal:
Yes. Okay. We use in general right now we use mostly the hands-on simulation labs that we have with Comper
Steven Bowcut:
Okay
Albena Asenova-Belal:
For example, This is The company that do the certifications and our students have a special discount during tech students have a special discount because of that. They were very good in the lab simulations.
They also, we were working and I led that to my successor. We were working to have a SOC that also will show the students how the real world hacking works. We needed to separate our network from the network of the school so we can Implement those tools like call Linux and different other tools for hacking and kind of simulate and pretend that we have some websites they can hack because again, we don’t want to FBI going to take to say, what are you doing?
And we always tell the students that this is very important. Don’t do that at home. Don’t just try what you learn here over there for malicious purposes. And that’s where also CCSA come along. I’m not sure how far they stand on the security operation center, but we have the resources for it and like I said, I let to my successor to do it. So I’m hoping by now they’ll have that as well. And the students can experience cyber range between blue teams and red teams and compete along.
Steven Bowcut:
Yeah, hopefully that’s critical. And let’s touch again on something we’ve already touched on, but let’s go a little deeper. So we talked about how the NSA and the DHS, you get feedback from them on what students need to know.
Are there any other ways when you’re designing curriculum for cybersecurity students, obviously it’s critical that they’re learning what the industry needs them to know. Are there any advisory boards or any other ways that you garner information from the industry to help build your curriculum?
Albena Asenova-Belal:
Oh yes. So first, in order to NSA and DHS approve us as a center of academic excellence in cyber defense, we have to submit so much paperwork. This is where the most sleepless week I ever had. When we had to do that, we had to submit all the syllabus for our all 11 classes, what actual assignments we do for the students, example, not all of them, but it was a very hefty process under the NSA website, NSA gov, they give you an account and we start submitting everything. We have to submit the credentials for the professors that were teaching as well.
So they need to know that everybody have the credential to teach that they’re also up to date with different certifications as well and that our curriculum and the assignments we are doing in our classes are good enough in order to be approved.
,So it was really, really very important. And to the details. We have a mentor that mentor us how to do these submissions in order to be approved. So being approved center of academic excellence is a big win for us. And this is where also like you mentioned, the advisory board is very important.
Usually when I go to those conferences, I always recruit people like, please come be in our advisory board, but I’m in New York and you are in Georgia. I’m like, you can join online. Just we need your professional experience from out in the field to tell us what students need to do.
And we make this survey with the students, A PSA survey that shows what knowledge, what skills the students need to have in order to be successful in the field. So we do this survey with all the advisory board members and that is very important because like I told you sometimes last year that skill was very important. They say, oh, we don’t care about this anymore. You need to have that skill now. It is important.
So advisory board members and recruiting advisory board people all the time, it’s very crucial. Sometimes I feel like I’m a beggar, like, please come join. This is my business card. Give me your business card. People don’t have business cards anymore.
So I’m connecting them with LinkedIn and make sure I’m reaching out to them because that’s important. And interesting enough have even he texted me just yesterday, I have one of our advisory board members, I recruit him. Then he like it so much that he want to teach it.
He said, I actually want to teach these classes. I want to show the students. So that’s another benefit. The moment that they get used and see what we are doing, they decide that they actually want to teach as adjunct because they usually have their job in the field.
Steven Bowcut:
Excellent.
Albena Asenova-Belal:
So that’s another benefit.
Steven Bowcut:
Excellent. Now you mentioned getting a mentor to help you through that process. Let’s talk about mentors a little bit. So a student coming to Gwinnett, what could they expect in the area of finding a mentor or a group learning where they can get some assistance in how they’re learning either through the skillsUSA program or women in technology or any other thing that you might be involved?
Albena Asenova-Belal:
Yes, mentoring is very important. And how we do that in Gwinnet Tech is doing through the clubs like Women Technology club where every gender is welcome, it said women technology, but we have male students too. We have male students that were off sourcing the club.
So we do mentoring and we have also a mentoring program that is held by one of our other adjunct. Sometimes the adjuncts are more involved with us than the full-time. We have mentoring for the students according to their major.
And we also, the women in technology organization, I was advisor of that club, they have their own mentoring program that they ask us, give me your best chance in cybersecurity that want to get involved to assign them to mentors from different big companies like Google, Pfizer, Facebook, all these companies that also have cybersecurity departments in their field. So that helps a lot the students first to teach them how to behave, how to be professional.
Because in all these mentoring meetings we have, I learn one thing, yes, you have the technical skills, that’s great. You learn the technical skills as a student in Gwinnett Tech in the cybersecurity program, but you don’t have any soft skills. You don’t know how to work in teams. You don’t know how to share what you learn. You don’t know how to show your manager and teach them because the managers usually don’t know everything in depth. So you need to explain to them, to their language what you are doing.
So the soft skills are very important and at one point that’s what distinguish somebody to get the job or not. They both may have very strong technical skills, but if they don’t have the soft skills, the companies usually don’t want to deal with people that are not well-rounded. So that’s another point. So that’s what the mentoring actually do in general teach them mostly the soft skills because we are taking care of the technical skills. So the whole package is very important.
Steven Bowcut:
Yeah, very good, thank you. So one of the things that I noticed when I looked through your bio is that you’ve got a wide range of skills that you bring to your cybersecurity education approach. So this multidisciplinary skills idea.
Two things I guess I’m wondering is one is, so your background goes from drafting and design technologies to engineering and data analysis and now teaching and you’ve got cross-culture experience, so or does that influence how you teach?
And then I guess I’d also be interested in your opinion on about how students, the advantages to students who have kind of a multidisciplinary background where they’ve learned some other things as well as cybersecurity. And maybe that goes hand in hand with what we just talked about, but do you have any thoughts in that area?
Albena Asenova-Belal:
Oh yeah, thank you for this question. That’s my favorite question actually. Diversity about the diversity because I’m the diversity. Let me tell a little bit again about from my bio and personal aspect. I’m from Bulgaria and I’m a Christian. My husband is from Egypt and he’s a Muslim. So we are not only from different countries, we are from different continents, religions background, you name it. And even now my son is dating a lady that we hope will be our daughter-in-law from South Korea.
So I welcome, I love that we’re international family and when I see a diversity in my classes, I love that because those skills are very important for the way people are thinking. Even when somebody say, well I was into music now I want to be in cyber, do you think my skills can transfer? I’m like, yes. Because in cybersecurity field there is so many layers that you need skills for.
For example, let’s say because my husband is a musician, that’s why I’m giving this example. Probably let’s say as a musician, people can hear when they try to track a hacker and see, okay, listening to a voice, a mail or a phone call and only musicians can hear, oh, there is a train passing far away or there is this or there is that different alignments of music notes, which I cannot hear or other people can cannot show.
Also the language is very important. Some things in cybersecurity field go to different languages. Yes, I speak Bulgarian, which is very close to Russian. As a student in Bulgaria, in my high school we had to learn Russian. So I know how I can, I hardly speak now in Russian, but I understand and you never know what skills you can apply to different positions.
You don’t have to know only coding and Linux and all that, all these soft skills and all these background skills you have, let’s say different hackers have also different affiliations with different groups and religions and all that. So when we have professional people with all that experience, this only can benefit the cybersecurity field. And that’s what we are talking about over there.
I love for example, when I go to these conferences to see all these people from, they’re in America now, they’re cyber professionals, but they’re all around the globe. I was happy to see one lady from Cairo, Egypt, which I’m like, let’s go together to Cairo people from different places.
I didn’t see many people from Bulgaria, which is really disappointing a little bit, but even in Eastern Europe. So that’s crucial. That’s actually the most important thing in that cyber field to be successful because you need these people with all these backgrounds and understanding.
Steven Bowcut:
I love that idea and especially if you kind of layer on the concept of social engineering. So almost every threat or attack has some element of social engineering. Well, you don’t need to know coding to understand social engineering, you need to know people to understand social engineering.
And so I think that’s very helpful. So another thing that’s really critical I think, and I think it’s critical, let see if you agree, is this certifications and the different cloud technologies and certificates that you can get industry both by vendors and industry groups. So how do you feel about those and do you promote those and do your students normally get involved in certifications and what do you
Albena Asenova-Belal:
Recommend? Well, certifications, I have two opinions. This sounds crazy, but certifications are important because some of the employers are actually really respect that a lot beside the education. They want to know that people are up to date with things and they have certain certifications.
That’s why most of the certifications in it have expiration date, maximum two or three years no more because things change. And I like that when students are interested in certifications in cyber, I always tell them, start now with the security plus certifications if you want to do that.
But that exclude the people that really still have the skills and have the knowledge, but they’re not good test takers. And we talk about that in several of our conferences. When we separate to different groups, we talk about that. And actually some people are against the certifications because that cannot exactly distinguish that you are good or not.
I have a colleague, he’s friend of mine, he’s a faculty also. He has 30 certifications and he study for each of them three days. He just have this photographic memory. He knows how to, he memorize it, he go and take it. But that he has all these skills. I doubt he cannot possibly have all 30 certification and he specialize in AWS and all of that in depth. You don’t have that knowledge in depth for sure when you have so many. So that’s where I have two opinions.
Certifications are good, but people without certifications, but other skills also probably are good. They just are not good test takers. They know. But when they go and test the test, there is some mental things, you go blank, you freeze. It is similar when people are taking exams, I apply that to my classes too. When I give them exams, I’m like, don’t stress so much. This can be a bad day for you. And that’s another thing applied to certification.
You just can’t go and just you have a bad day, you don’t sleep enough. You wake the kind of secret. So you always can reschedule and take another day for certifications when you do it on your own.
But again, the not good test taker people that apply to them and that doesn’t mean that they will be better employers or they have less skills. So it’s good to have certifications and go for it if you are one of those that can take it in three days learning. But if you cannot, it’s still okay when you have the skills.
Steven Bowcut:
Yeah, very good. I love that answer because I too have struggled with that in the past when I guess the reason that I lean towards certifications is because I know that they are oftentimes a barrier to employment. So employers, hiring managers, they’re going to say, okay, we want this degree, but we also want these three certifications.
And they’re not even going to talk to you if you don’t have those certifications. So you may be the best person for the job, but you’re never going to get the interview to show that unless you have the certification. So maybe the advice would be to those people who are not good test takers, but they have the knowledge and they would be great employees, they just have to work harder at getting that interview.
They have to find a way around that barrier and get that interview so they can show the employer what they can do. So that’s great advice. So thank you for that.
Albena Asenova-Belal:
Exactly.
Steven Bowcut:
So we’re about out of time. I have two questions left that I wanted to ask you. The last question is, it’d be kind of a forward looking trends and we’ll probably touch on AI, but before we get to that last question, we always try and get some advice that our listeners can actually do something with. So what’s some maybe actionable advice?
So if you imagined you were talking to a student or somebody who’s looking at changing careers and they’re considering cybersecurity, what would you tell them to do to choose the right path for their goals?
How would they sort through all the options of getting a cybersecurity education to decide where they want to go to school? What do they need certifications? Do they need a degree? And if they need a degree, do they need to get a master’s degree? Not everyone has a PhD like you do Albena, but they may need a master’s degree. So how do you advise your students?
Albena Asenova-Belal:
Yeah, the first advice I always give them, because I always have students after my first class they say, oh, my major was in network, but now I want to change to cyber because it looks fun hacking. And when I show ’em some hacking things, but I always tell ’em, listen, you need to know that your personality is fit for that job. And of course your background can go in different cybersecurity fields.
You don’t have to be a good color to have cyber. There is so many other fields. There was a website, it’s not on the top of my head one exactly. You can kind of see the completely different fields in cyber and align with your personalities. If you like to stay in a dark room for eight hours or even in the night and look up the package tracer and see if somebody’s hacking something, that’s the job for you.
If you don’t like to talk to people much. But if you want to go and share the cybersecurity field with others, or you may want to be in the cybersecurity training. So it’s very important. I said, you really going to do this for the rest of your life? Hopefully that’s what you’re aiming.
You need to know that the most time you’ll be spending at work, not really at home. So you need to like it. You want to go there and to go there and what you do. That’s very important. And I tell ’em sometimes when I’m teaching, I’m so happy to be in the educational field.
Sometimes I feel guilty that they pay me to do things I actually like to do. So that’s how I want them to feel. They love what they do, but they need to match their personality. There is so many personality tests. Also they can find if they’re introvert or extrovert or that also help with navigating where you go in the cybersecurity field.
Steven Bowcut:
Yeah, that is great advice. That really is great advice. If you’re not the kind of person who wants to sit and look at a screen, then don’t go that direction. Find something that’s more towards social engineering or another aspect of cybersecurity.
And cybersecurity, as you said at the very top of the show, cybersecurity is so broad. We really need everybody. Regardless of your skillset or your personality type, there is a place for you in cybersecurity. It is so broad.
Alright, so let’s get to our last question here. So our last question, we always like to look forward. We asked our guests to kind of dust off your crystal ball and look into the future. And so what kind of trends are you seeing that influence cybersecurity education or cybersecurity careers?
And always when I ask this question, or at least for the last five or 10 years when I’ve asked this question, AI has come up. So it may include AI, but it may not include quantum computing. So what trends do you see are influencing what students need to know about cybersecurity?
Albena Asenova-Belal:
Well, quantum computing is good too, but the most thing I see now is the AI really. Because also on those conferences, even the recent one, the last one I went just few months ago, that what they were stating, the employees, the employers actually want people to know already how to use AI. And now a lot of people are afraid that I’ll use my job because of AI.
And yes, maybe some people lose their jobs because of that, but most will lose their jobs or even not get a job because they don’t know how to use it. And that’s exactly what I was preaching to them in my class. I mean in this class we are using AI, don’t do it in your English class. They don’t like it in this class we are, you need to know how to use it. So that’s the trend.
And with AI, as long as they use it for as a learning tool, you just have everything in few clicks. However, with that said, you always need to check the resources because AI can speed out for something that is not actually true or something that is kind of made up.
There was a story about a low case that somebody did in the court and turned out that case didn’t even exist and things like that. So I always tell ’em, check your resources and make sure do your due diligence that what you have from AI, it’s working. And even if you are trying to learn a code, I actually, I try with AI, I said, show me how to hack. But so far they say, I cannot show you how to hack this against the law. I can tell some hacking tools I cannot show you.
So AI have some restrictions so far. We were working on many AI policies and law and how to do that. It’s still up in the air. Nothing is really very well set for AI, but it’s here to stay. People are going to use it and I want them to know how also to distinguish deep fake videos or things like that from actual real videos. There is a lot of deep fake I see now out there. I just want them to learn how to use it, how to know what to distinguish between right and wrong. But we have to do that. It’s not, we know the threat actors.
Steven Bowcut:
The threat actors are using it. And so the defenders also have to understand how it works and what the threat actors are doing with it. Right?
Albena Asenova-Belal:
Exactly that point. Exactly. That’s another point.
Steven Bowcut:
Alright, well we are out of time, but this has been a blast. Thank you so much. I really appreciate you giving some of your time to help students and prospective students get some insights into the cybersecurity field. So thank you so much for being with us.
Albena Asenova-Belal:
Thank you. I was happy to be here. Thank you so much for your time.
Steven Bowcut:
That brings us to the end of this episode of the Cybersecurity Guide podcast. A big thank you to Dr. Albena Anova Bal for joining us and sharing her insights into this transformative power of cybersecurity education.
If you’re a student or early career professional, exploring pathways into cybersecurity, we hope today’s discussion helped illuminate the importance of hands-on training, academic rigor and mentorship.
Whether you are considering a technical college pursuing certifications, or thinking about where you can make the greatest impact, there’s never been a more exciting time to enter the cybersecurity field.
To learn more about Gwinnett Technical Colleges programs or to explore more episodes of our series, visit us at cybersecurityguide.org. Thanks for listening, and until next time, stay curious, stay safe, and keep building the skills that secure our digital world.