Emerging cyber threats, workforce pipeline development, artificial intelligence business solutions, experiential learning and collaborative research involving USF鈥檚 Bellini College of Artificial Intelligence, Cybersecurity and Computing will be the focus of several presentations this week at CyberBay 2026.
The annual conference, held in downtown Tampa at the JW Marriott Tampa Water Street, brings together experts from academia, industry and government to explore the technologies and partnerships shaping the future of cybersecurity.
USF鈥檚 Bellini College faculty and graduate students will participate in four sessions throughout the event to highlight projects that connect students, researchers and industry partners to address real-world security challenges.
If you鈥檙e attending the conference this week, make sure you don鈥檛 miss these breakout sessions:
Preparing Tampa Bay鈥檚 AI-ready cybersecurity workforce
Thursday, March 12, 4 to 5 p.m., Tampa Bay Salon 3
From Campus to Cyber Command: How USF Bellini College and ReliaQuest Are Building Tampa Bay鈥檚 Pipeline for an AI-Ready Cyber Workforce
The first Bellini College session features Marbin Pazos-Revilla, an assistant professor with USF鈥檚 Bellini College, will discuss how partnerships between universities and industry prepare the next generation of cybersecurity professionals.
Marbin Pazos-Revilla, left, with members of the USF CyberHerd team during CyberBay 2025 in October. Pazos-Revilla will be presenting this year, along with Patrick Whitaker of ReliaQuest, to discuss how partnerships between universities and industry prepare the next generation of cybersecurity professionals. Photo by Jeremy Maready
As Tampa Bay emerges as a national cybersecurity hub, the partnership between USF鈥檚 Bellini College and ReliaQuest is helping bridge the gap between classroom learning and real-world security environments.
The session will explore how specialized coursework, hands-on training platforms and industry-aligned internships help students develop practical skills in threat detection, threat intelligence and AI-enabled security operations.
Panelists also will discuss how programs aligned with the National Institute of Standards and Technology鈥檚 National Initiative for Cybersecurity Education framework can help close the growing cybersecurity talent gap.
Building the next generation of cybersecurity service platforms
Friday, March 13, 10 to 11 a.m., Manatee Room
Session: The Next-Gen MSP/MSSP Stack: USF Bellini College, ConnectSecure and Timus Networks on Capabilities and Career Readiness
Kicking off the final day of the conference, a breakout session with USF鈥檚 Bellini College faculty will focus on how academia and industry can work together to prepare students for operational cybersecurity roles within managed security service providers.
Kurt Friday, an assistant professor in USF鈥檚 Bellini College, will join industry leaders Andrew Reddie of Timus Networks and Ryan Seymour of ConnectSecure to examine how modern security service providers protect distributed organizations at scale.
The panel will discuss how Bellini College鈥檚 experiential learning curriculum and its upcoming Tech Career Accelerator program are designed to provide students the tools, architectures and workflows used in real-world security operations.
The group will also explore how emerging security technologies are shaping the next-generation managed service provider and managed security service provider technology stack, including exposure management and risk visibility platforms, continuous vulnerability and compliance monitoring and secure connectivity architectures such as secure access service edge and zero trust network access.
Together, these technologies help security teams manage risk across complex enterprise environments while providing students with hands-on experience using the tools that define modern cybersecurity operations.
Using AI to identify cybersecurity risks hidden in vendor contracts
Friday, March 13, 10 to 11 a.m., Tampa Bay Salon 2
Session: How Bad Vendor Contracts Create Security Nightmares (And How to Fix Them)
John Licato, associate professor at the USF Bellini College of Artificial Intelligence, Cybersecurity and Computing, will present a session examining how weak vendor contract language can significantly increase third-party cyber risk. The presentation explores how AI-powered contract analysis can help organizations identify risky clauses, strengthen vendor agreements and proactively reduce the likelihood and impact of security breaches.
Using real-world examples, Licato will break down common contractual weaknesses that can turn routine vendor incidents into major cybersecurity breaches. He will also demonstrate how artificial intelligence tools can analyze large volumes of vendor agreements to identify hidden security risks, helping organizations strengthen contract language, improve vendor oversight and reduce exposure to third-party cyber threats before incidents occur.
AI-powered research to detect botnets faster
Friday, March 13, 11 a.m. to noon, Manatee Room
USF - Rapid7 Research Partnership Showcase
Ongoing research collaborations between USF and Rapid7, a global cybersecurity company, through the Rapid7 Cyber Threat Intelligence Lab round out the final Bellini College-related presentation on the conference schedule.
Simon Ou, professor and director of the Rapid7 Cyber Threat Intelligence Lab at USF鈥檚 Bellini College will be presenting at CyberBay 2026 about ongoing research collaborations between the college and Rapid7, a global cybersecurity company. Photo by Jeremy Maready
The session will feature presentations from Cynthia Wyre, Rapid7鈥檚 project manager of security research, along with Simon Ou, professor and director of the Rapid7 Cyber Threat Intelligence Lab at USF鈥檚 Bellini College. USF student researchers Kumar Shashwat and Francis Hahn will then present work conducted in partnership with Rapid7 scientists.
One of the collaborative projects to be featured focuses on improving the detection of botnets - networks of compromised devices secretly controlled by attackers to launch large-scale cyberattacks.
鈥淏ecause these hackers hide their server communications using the exact same Transport Layer Security encryption certificates that legitimate websites use, it's impossible for a human analyst to manually check the sheer volume of them on the internet to find the bad guys,鈥 Shashwat said.
To help with this, the joint research team developed a clustering-based model that uses embedding techniques commonly associated with large language models to analyze certificate patterns. Shashwat and Hahn will discuss how their approach and findings can significantly reduce analyst workload, potentially allowing security teams to identify malicious infrastructure much faster.
If you haven鈥檛 already registered, you can .