Think Fast or Get Pwned: How Esports Is Forging Elite Cyber Defenders

Cybersecurity success increasingly hinges on cognitive readiness, the ability to spot patterns fast, make the right calls under pressure, and perform amid chaos.
 
On this episode of the SECURE AF PODCAST, Will Arnett sits down with Jessica Gulick, Founder and Commissioner of the U.S. Cyber Games, to discuss why cognitive training is critical, how esports players develop these skills instinctively, and why esports represents an untapped pipeline for elite cyber talent.
 
They also dive into how AI elevates the importance of human cognition—and how security leaders can strengthen SOC morale by leading more like coaches.

Transcript

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SPEAKER_02 0:00

Cybersecurity is one of the only fields, I think technology fields, where there is a declared us versus them, right? There is a mission. We're here to defend. Some of us are there to exploit, but for the most part, we're here to defend. And so there is that great um similarity with sports that really helps.

SPEAKER_00 0:23

You are now listening to the Secure AF Podcast.

SPEAKER_01 0:32

Welcome back to another episode of the Secure AF Podcast. I'm your host, Will Arnett. I'm here today with a special guest, Jessica Guleck, the founder and commissioner of U.S. Cyber Games. U.S. Cyber Games develops elite cyber talent through hands-on competition, advanced training, and global collaboration. It connects emerging and experienced defenders, preparing them to solve real world challenges while representing the United States in international cyber competitions. But and as we'll talk about, it's not just a student thing. That's one of the misconceptions, Jessica, that you like to point out. So we met at MU CyberCon at Marshall University, and you gave a presentation that I unfortunately missed because I had to catch a flight. But you gave a presentation that argues that the biggest untapped advantage in cybersecurity is not technology, but trained human cognition. So let's talk about that for a little bit.

SPEAKER_02 1:39

Absolutely. I think that for years we've heard that the human is the weakest link. There's been a ton of investment in the evolution of technology, in automating processes, in AI, in quantum, et cetera, throughout our marketplace. But we haven't invested necessarily in sharpening the abilities of the human to be able to leverage these tools to their highest point. And that's where I think our society really needs to take a moment and pause and look back at the entire pathway, if you will, from education to training to careers, and say, what can we do differently that will position the human in a successful way to be able to leverage these technologies to really achieve the dreams and the goals that we set out for them? And I believe part of that is there's a ton of focus on intelligence and education. I think that it's it's time we look back at the basics and realize that the human mind is a muscle and start training it and building it so that it can take on more information, make quicker decisions to be able to understand and do analysis so that we get uh to that point where uh we are um actively leveraging the machine, um, but we're also in control and not being controlled by.

SPEAKER_01 3:10

Right. And that that that came up, the conference we were at CyberCon, that just came up constantly, this element of this misconception of what is AI. And, you know, we hear people talking all the time about AI, it's going to take jobs and you know, everything's being replaced by AI. But, you know, we preach over and over and over, no, no, no, no, no. AI is just the tool, you know, it's not the solution to everything, and we need to make sure that we're keeping humans at the end of that. And I think that's a lot of what we're talking about, especially in the cyber games, and especially with like this human cognition, is the fact that how can we train people, people to be looking at these and to be alert and and to be stronger in that. Um, so talking about technology, so talking about AI, um, how does AI change the importance of human cognition rather than replace it?

SPEAKER_02 4:02

You know, I think that our world is changing. Um we have also uh our world is changing because of AI. It's going faster, as you said, it's replacing different uh capabilities and staff. It makes us want to think what do we need to do differently? Uh and when we look at education and preparing the workforce, for example, we had a we had a talk um just a few weeks ago, and it was all about AI and the workforce. And the reality is when you are a business manager and you're looking at leveraging AI for efficiency, right? To start automating things, uh, to replace some of the tasks that you have your staff doing, you still have your team and they still have value. So you have to re-look at how do I teach my team how to speak with technology? It's literally a language. And I'm not talking about coding, but thinking differently about how you communicate so that you can have AI do what you need it to do and do it properly, right? Uh, and to be able to trust in the results and the outcomes that you get. That takes a change in how you approach your project. It takes more leadership, uh, pushing leadership and decision making down the chain, which is a lot different. Before, traditionally, um, in the last couple of decades, uh, you have your traditional manager, if you will, and they have their team and they do the tasks and they present the information up. The manager makes the decision and takes the action. Um, now we're pushing all that down, and AI is becoming their teams. And so we basically are turning our team into little managers. Does that make sense? I know that's simplification. Oh, yeah. They need to have the same skill sets. They need to have the the ability to know what the strategy is, what is the real outcome that I'm trying to achieve, what are the trusted inputs that I need to um rely on, and how do I get AI to do what I need to do properly? Those are skill sets we haven't necessarily trained our workforce on. We didn't hire based on pattern matching. We didn't hire based on um strategic thinking. We hired to do a task, and now the task is being done by the machine. Um, so how can we prepare our workforce and train them differently? And when we talk about training, it's not just training, this is how I use AI. It's re it's it's transforming their roles and their responsibilities to a higher level, which has a lot of competitive advantage and opportunity for companies that are willing to embrace it. Um, but there is no doubt that this is digital transformation at its peak with the evolution of AI. So it's about looking at the human again and saying, what are the skill sets and what is the training that my team needs to be successful?

SPEAKER_01 6:54

Absolutely. So speaking of that, so these skills, um, how do you explain the difference between cognitive skills and workplace skills to skeptical executives at companies?

SPEAKER_02 7:08

Absolutely. Um, we've all talked about soft skills or power skills, workplace skills. Um, they all have to do with your typical teamwork, leadership, communication, um, which are vital. But cognitive skills are slightly different. They're more of the operating system versus the application, right? So it's more about readiness versus intelligence. You go to school to educate, right? You learn, you become more intelligent on a topic. With cognitive skills, you train them, right? This is your this is like training your mind to have better memory, um, to be able to uh see different tactics um that are going on around you, uh, to be able to uh find the patterns. So if you look at sports, for example, let's say your quarterback, if you're a football player, or if not, take a look at um NASCAR and um the speed at which they are driving, they have to be able to see certain indicators and clues incredibly quickly. I mean, you're talking microseconds to make decisions and have confidence. They aren't thinking in those microseconds, they're reacting. And reacting takes training and drills. So you go to school to learn the body of knowledge, right? To understand the tasks. This is how I do spaghetti. But what you do is you train for sports, or let's say a quarterback again, um, so that in the seconds where you have the ball and you're trying to get into the touchdown, that you can see you know where people are going to be, right? You can see certain indicators of where the um competitors are. Um, and you're able to make that split moment decision. You aren't thinking, you're doing. And the only way that you can do that is by training again and again and again. Um, and your body just starts to understand and you're training it like a muscle. Um, you're working it out just like you would go to a gym, but you're working it out um in your field in order to be the best that you can be. Does that make more sense?

SPEAKER_01 9:14

Oh, yeah, absolutely. Um, so yeah, it's funny because I was making this correlation. I was thinking in my mind, it's probably the first time that we've had a sports metaphor on this uh podcast, and we've done over a hundred episodes.

unknown 9:26

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 9:26

So um, but yeah, it's it's as in as quarterback, you're also you're looking at that defense, you're looking at the eyeballs of the defenders, the secondary, the linebackers, and trying to read where everyone's coming from. So it's almost like those are like your alerts that are coming in. So there's this alert, there's that alert, there's that alert, and trying to read and see, like, all right, what's what's real? And and there is that real security fatigue. And I think that's what you're getting at with the cognition with this training. You're trying to fight against that fatigue that a lot of SOC analysts um run up against. So, what are some of the ways that you train um specifically for this? Like, what are some examples of the training?

SPEAKER_02 10:10

Absolutely. So there um, well, first off, it I find that interesting that this is the first time you guys have talked about sports. Cybersecurity is one of the only fields, I think, technology fields, where there is a declared us versus them, right? There is a mission we're here to defend. Some of us are there to exploit, but for the most part, we're here to defend. And so there is that great um similarity with sports that really helps. Um, it's also that sense of belonging. Our community is very strong in the sense of belonging. And that's what sports really uh cultivates. And it again, it has to do with that team expect uh perspective. Um, and ultimately, what you're doing in sports, whether again, it's you know, fast driving or throwing a ball, is you are building instinct and intuition. And that's what helps us start to predict moves of um our opponents, right? And so if you can build the instinct and intuition into a security operator inside a SOC that perhaps is supporting a global corporation and dealing with attacks all the time, you are now stronger from a defense standpoint, right? Because they know the tools that they have in front of them and what the indicators are, and they're very familiar with the context, with the environment that they're in as well. So it's fascinating to me. Um, what we scout for and do evaluations for is really can be simplified into three main things currency, proficiency, and flow. So how current are the cyber athletes, as we call them? Um, are they in their field, right? Are they educated? Are they out there speaking? Are they um actively looking for CVEs? Are they playing capture the flag uh games on a weekly, monthly basis? How proficient are they in certain areas? Um, are they um the best in the nation for their age range in web security? Are they known for their ability to do deep digital forensics, right? Um are they uh very good at cryptography, pattern matching, verse engineering? So, what is their proficiency level on these skills? So if you're looking at the NICE framework, if you will, workforce framework, um, you have the skills and the knowledge areas, but how proficient can we see that they are based on how quickly they can do something, um, uh the decisions they make to try to figure a problem out, uh what tools do they rely on? Do they know? Um, these are all indicators of a strong candidate for a cyber athlete. And last is the flow. And the flow is what we get from um esports, at least the term, but the concept we all know. So in esports, they call the flow is that state in which you're at at your highest peak. Right. I don't know about you, but growing up in our field, I always called it as I'm in the zone. Leave me alone, I'm in the zone, right? Um, I am fully in, focused on what I'm doing. There, it's that sweet spot where you can um really take it this way or that way. You're just you're in that flow. And to have somebody who is in cybersecurity, um in gaming, to be able to get into that flow and stay in that flow, regardless of the environment around them, regardless of it, they're extremely tired because they've been traveling all night and now they're in Australia and it's a different hour, and um, they're not frustrated by the fact they've got a lot of noise around them. They were supposed to have their computer, their computer is busted, so they had to borrow somebody else's computer. That ability to work through um some of the issues and pressures that you have and stay in that flow, that high peak of performance, that is very important to us too. That is something that you learn with experience. It comes with a little bit of kind of how you grew up or you know, who you are. Um, but it's it's also something that you can train, believe it or not. This is what athletes do all the time. We talk about it when it's a Super Bowl, right? We're always talking about the rookies, who's never been to the Super Bowl before. Are they going to crash under the pressure of the Super Bowl? Um, it's the same thing in our sport when we travel internationally. Are they going to be able to handle themselves as a professional, be able to get food and go to bed and wake up and be ready to be in the game on that day when the stress is on them? It's very actually difficult. Um, people say that it's not a sport, Jess. Is they're sitting at computers, they're not running. Mentally, it's exhausting, exhausting for a nine-hour competition to be highly focused on one particular area. And that takes training and takes techniques. Um, and so we do scout for uh, we leverage attack and defense competitions and just watching them interact with each other on Discord and kind of that immersion over the combine, which is our scouting and evaluate uh virtual camp, which is about eight weeks long. We get to know the students a lot and their abilities to withstand some of the competition around them. Um, do they cheer each other on? Are they cutthroat? What decisions do they make? How do they, how do they react when we tell them, hey, the meeting's not happening today? If you're flipping out and you can't take, you know, a change in the tool, I know we were going to play this game, but we're gonna play this game now, then you're probably not gonna do well in competition. Um, if your heart's in the right place and you, you know, you're mentally stable, you're emotionally stable, having that ability to get to flow, that is where you get points on the board.

SPEAKER_01 15:51

Right. That and that translates to real life scenarios as well, that ability to be flexible because when you're sitting in the sock, you're not going to know the the attackers aren't going to announce what game plan they're going to use today. You know, you have to be aware of what can possibly happen and things can happen, multiple things can happen all at once. Um, and so there's there's not really a plan necessarily for how the day is going to go. You have to be quick on your feet. And I found that interesting, what you were saying about, you know, eating, sleeping, though very important. One of the things that our CISO does, whenever we have an incident response and our team goes out, the first thing that we ask the team at the business is, hey, when was the last time you slept? When was the last time you ate? Okay, we're ordering food, go find a dark room and sleep. We got this, we're taking you over this. And that's very important to make sure that if you're gonna be able to survive in this industry in this field, you've got to take care of yourself first so you can take care of everyone else.

SPEAKER_02 16:55

Absolutely. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 16:58

So, what cognitive traits would you say separate a good analyst from an elite cyber athlete?

SPEAKER_02 17:06

Separate or in common. Let's do let's do both. It's funny. What we um we started calling them athletes, I want to say five years ago, and we got a lot of pushback from the community, um, mainly the cybersecurity community. They're like, they're not athletes. Um, but when you look at the amount of time and energy that these players, if you will, are putting into the game, you're talking eight to ten hours a week. Um, that is on par with Olympic training. It just is. Um, so they are um dedicated to a higher level of performance. Uh, your normal analyst might be coming in um if you're hiring, for example, and you have two people in front of you. One is from our team, one is not, right? One plays cyber games and one doesn't. Um, what you're looking at is the person who plays cyber games, they're coming with their eyes open. Um, so they are looking for patterns, they're looking for where do I need help from? They see things. Um, they aren't just a young uh professional that's I'm here, I showed up on time. Do I get a star? What work do you want me to do? Um, they've already scanned your network. They're like, okay, this is what I think we need to do, right? There's that different level of confidence, that level of um, sure, you want to do this today? We can do this. They're comfortable, right? On changing and switching around. Um, and they they have that. It's funny, I talk to many of them. And again, we're dealing with ear early career professionals for the most part for the program. And um because of that, I get some pushback from them because brilliant minds, right? Never been in sports. Um, so they're like, Jess, I'm not a leader. Okay, okay. I know you're a leader. No, don't, I'm not, I'm not a leader. I'm you're not the definition of a leader. What you are is you're an influencer, right? They are influencing the people around them because the people around them know how brilliant they are. And so it's important that we teach them liter leadership skills because with great responsibility, right? With great power comes great responsibility. And to have the power of being the person who's the smartest in the room means you have a lot of responsibility on you to be able to um lead, right, and serve at the same time. And so we work a lot with the students in terms of um trying to teach them some of those honing those professional skills, because mentally, um from a um from a technical standpoint, they are at the mid to senior level when they work with us on the team. But professionally, in terms of the soft skills, they are at, I would say at the junior level, right? You're at that intern um level. Um, but again, the cognitive skills are there, and that's the difference. So it's really the power of three. Um, it's the technical skills, the workplace skills, and the cognitive skills that we're looking to hone um to get the best of the best uh to represent the United States.

SPEAKER_01 19:57

So what kind of are there any specific candidates that would normally be overlooked that you see that that thrive in US cyber games?

SPEAKER_02 20:07

Um the quiet ones. The quiet ones. Um, whether they're neurodiverse or they're an introvert. Um many times in school they were forgotten about or quiet or they just did their own thing. Uh, but in our community, um, they're almost heroes, right? Uh, because they see the world differently um and they open up. Um, you get down to a meeting, uh one of our trainings, our virtual camps, et cetera, and there's very little being spoken to at all. They don't talk a lot. But the chat over on the right, you've got to be continuously scanning because they're having wonderful conversations on chat. They live on chat on typing. That is how they they work. Um, how they associate with each other is different. Um, we're still trying to learn that. How do you build teaming, you know, bonding, um, belonging in that environment? You compete together, but before you actually compete together, how do you train that in? And we play a lot of games. Um, we tell people we are not about um training you with the skills on how to do your job. You do that on your own, right? You do that through your education. The United States' university programs are amazing with that. We don't come in and bring teachers to do that. We bring in coaches and facilitators to help unlock the abilities within the people. That's not teaching them this is how you do it. Um, that is getting them to do it again and again and again. Hey, can we pivot on that? Let's watch that play back again. Okay, you did this. What if you did this? You know, that's coaching. Um, that's not teaching, uh, not in the traditional sense. Um, so many times if you have somebody quiet or very dedicated, they start to bloom in our program. Um, and there's always challenges with that because they find themselves in different situations, talking to people around the world. And it's fascinating to me. We have a lot of conversations. The world is a very scary place in many ways right now, with all the action that's going on in the world. And our program is international. We take students abroad and compete. They need to be able to compete and network and represent. So we talk a lot about how, you know, how you deal with other people's opinions that you don't share, right? Is this a place to get into the argument or is this a place to just listen and you guys be you, we'll be us. We're going to play the game. We can, you know, have uh a Coke of beer or whatever, depending on the age afterwards and get to know each other and network. And many of them, um, uh, when their first years to the team, they've never even traveled outside their state, much less the country. Uh, so it's always eye-opening. Um, and again, it we get them right at the age point where they are blossoming. They really are um uh starting to learn about who they are as an adult, and it's fun. But those kind of individuals, I would say, are usually quite um and and not as appreciated um in school.

SPEAKER_01 23:08

Yeah, I could see that. Um, so we we're talking a lot about students now, and one of the things that you that you said is, you know, this is this is not just about students. So uh would you like to expound on that a bit?

SPEAKER_02 23:22

We um we borrow the saying from the esports world that to learn to play, play to learn. So if you learn how to play cyber and tech games, you can play for the rest of your life. Um, and that really opens you up. So we have a program called Wicked Six, which is our women's program primarily open now to both uh gender, to all vent genders. Um, but it is all about um using games to help sharpen your skills. And it there is a different level of um learning that happens in competition. Whether you're shoulder surfing and learning from somebody else, um you're watching this outcast and the broadcast, and they're using different tools and you're like, I didn't know that. But there's also this um realization and um coming to grips with your internal um imposture syndrome, right? Seeing somebody else take over a challenge and try to figure it out. They're like, okay, they Google surfed, I can do that too. You know, um, I don't have to have all the answers. Um, but it it's it's just it's humanity, right? You're just relating to other people and you're learning from them and you're able to do this in a fun environment. It's it's funny. I ran a competition back in the day, gosh, a couple of decades ago, and it was for adults. Um, and it was actually um the Maryland Cyber Challenge, uh, MDC3 up in Baltimore. And we did multi-generation. And the, and it was interesting because many of the small businesses were coming out and saying, so I can take my one-hit wonder security person and join up with, you know, five others from different small companies and they can work together. And now they have a group that they can um learn from. That kind of networking is huge, right? Uh, particularly if you are the only security person, only tech person in your company to be able to um train or game with other people. Um, it's um eye-opening. It's also confidence building. Uh, so if you're a boomerang, as we call it, coming back into the community, um, starting to play some of these games allow you to experiment um and to uh learn, you know, what you're good at and you know, what is the role that you play on the team and see how these tools are in action, right? To be able to learn about those tools.

SPEAKER_01 25:38

Nice. How do you uh respond to critics who still see gaming as a guilty pleasure instead of preparation?

SPEAKER_02 25:46

I would say that um they're missing out. Games are an amazing way to build team and to build your mental capability. You're they are cognitively training, they're essentially going to the gym when they play the game. Um, sure it's a guilty pleasure, uh, but they're using their mind um and keeping it sharp. What are you doing? Are you binging TV? Um, I mean, it's it's a guilty pleasure, sure, but they're learning how to get past barriers in front of them, right? It also helps with a lot of attention um discipline, if you will, for ADHD. It helps with memory um cognition training, if you know. Um, you're using your mind uh and you're working as a team and you're socializing, it can help them in many ways. It's not a guilty pleasure, it is training in many ways. Um, it's a like I said, it's as valuable as going to the gym.

SPEAKER_01 26:47

Yeah, and that's so important. There's I think you and I talked about this, uh Marshall. I've had this strong belief that, you know, having this around all the time is making it where we are losing the ability to have short-term, long-term memory. Because if we have all of this data at our fingertips, why should we remember things? And so I force myself specifically as just kind of my own little um private thing to if I'm having a hard time remembering something, I will refuse to Google it. I will try to activate and search my brain to find the information because I think that's important and trying to, like you say, that's exercise that's trying to like train your brain to try and pull those memories and to remember how to do that. So um how closely do international cyber competitions resemble real-world cyber conflict?

SPEAKER_02 27:47

I'd say cyber conflict or cyber cooperation um is really the question. The games themselves, um, when you look at a Jeopardy game, a Jeopardy game is not it's not constructed to to mimic workplace skills. Attack and defense is in many ways, but Jeopardy is more puzzling. Um, however, when you move it from being just a CTF to being more of a sport, we have coaches, we have timeouts, we have some um um substitutions, alternate um alternates. Uh there's strategy in it. Um you are in some ways uh working with international jury. Uh, so international judges have different rule takes and different perspective. What is fair play? Um in the United States, we can have a really interesting conversation about what fair play is. Imagine having that with 50 other nations. That's pretty intricate. Um, but at the same time, having that kind of international perspective uh is also very important from a business standpoint. Uh, we were talking about the use of AI and gaming right now, that's huge. We spend more hours talking about AI policy than we do any other aspect of the game. And um I think that what we have figured out is that AI use is not just a technology use in the game, it's a business use in the game. Um, so as uh for this next game that we have in Australia, uh what we've done is kind of the human resistance for the first seven hours and then the robot uprising for the last two hours. So AI use is allowed primarily in the last two hours of the game, and they're given a budget over two days. So the team has to make business decisions on how to utilize them. Um, that is very interesting. You know, that that has similarities with the workplace. From a Jeopardy standpoint, I I gotta take a step back and say, in terms of strategy, it's very similar uh to businesses because it has a Jeopardy board, and you know, there's 500 points, 300 points, et cetera. Um, and you have multiple different topics. Well, think about it from a standpoint of your vulnerability list. What are you prioritizing, high, medium, or lows? Which department do you prioritize first? Um, where do you spend your time and your resources? Where are you most at risk? Um, and it flips for the game instead of being at risk. Um, it's really where's your best opportunity to make points, right? We use dynamic scoring. So you want to go for the more intricate ones that will hold your points the more uh the longest, if you will. Um so it's the decision making is very similar to the workplace. When we go to camp and we're training, we're looking at different aspects of how does the um captains lead during the game? Where do the people sit? How are they spending their time? How do they triage the problems? How do you love your passes, right? How do I pass you a challenge so that you can pick up from where I left, not start over? Um, you know, all these kinds of things are very similar in terms of workplace um simulations. And then you get back to the international piece. And when there's a major issue, I remember the first year um there was a uh someone did a denial of service attack, which was against the rules to our team. And um, in order to work that issue with the jury, we had to work internationally and work with the other team coaches to say, these are the indicators that we saw that tells us this is what happened. This is against the rules, and have that kind of collaboration, if you will, to be able to present and say, all the coaches agree this is against the rules, right? That's collaboration across international lines, um, which is kind of interesting. Uh, so it's it's um fun from a strategy standpoint, and there's a lot of decision making and pressure that is very similar. Um, but the skills, again, are related, correlated, I would say, um, in the Jeopardy side. But you get to attack and defense, and you're running exploits, you're running defense, doing patch management, vulnerability identification, et cetera. These are, you know, straight off the um the sock floor. Uh those skills uh are very relatable. In fact, many of the corporations that support us, they come in looking for talent for reverse engineering, malware research, um, you know, things to that degree.

SPEAKER_01 32:17

So speaking of the SOC floor, so um what lessons from esports coaching do most security leaders in the industry struggle to adopt?

SPEAKER_02 32:29

I'd say team management. Um it's it's fascinating. I I um I listen to a lot of books now on esport coaching uh because of the similarities of esport coaching. I remember the days um back before I was doing this, I was leading a team of cybersecurity uh folks that was doing an array of uh things from forensics to penetration penetration testing to a policy for the federal government. Um I would say from a coaching standpoint, there's a lot of similarities that they should be following in terms of communication, roles, and responsibilities, understanding um what is your area of expertise and what's mine and how do we work together. Uh, I would say how you love your passes, in other words, how you pass work um is is critical. Decision making, uh again, the coaching from a coaching standpoint, uh decision making is key. Uh, this is an area, it's funny. I talk with a lot of people around um the similarities. And I think the coaching is the number one area where I can make the most progress in the next couple of years. Like the cyber athletes themselves, they are doing a wonderful job. They've got education you we're cut, we're getting them at the right age from a drill, um, um helping them with drills, et cetera. But the coaching is where our community really needs to take a look at. And I think that it could really unleash some people because they go into these uh jobs, these professional jobs, at least hackers I know, right? Um, they go into these professional jobs and let's just say the suit's a little too tight, right? Um, but if they just embrace their job as being a coach rather than a manager, they might actually feel way more comfortable making decisions and leading the people and um understanding what the people are capable of, you know, understanding your team's strengths and weaknesses and then putting them in positions what focus on their strength. Um, we did a lot of talking again at one of the camps um that because of the age group that we're dealing with, they look at what they have to do their primary and their secondary areas, just like if you're a wide receiver, right? Or a quarterback, what are the areas you're gonna train in? Ours is like web security, cryptography, tooling, um, AI, you name it. Um, but when they look at it, they're like, okay, the primary one's my strength, the secondary one's what I want to learn. And I'm like, no, no, no, no. We're at the apex, baby. This is semi-pro team. All I care about is your strengths. I am not here to train your weaknesses. You do that on your own time. Do that in academia, right? Um, what we need you to do is be the best that you can be in the area that you're the best already. Um, and really push yourself. And I think that is what a coach does on a sports team, right? That we don't do enough in um teams at work. We look at our team and we're like, okay, I need everybody to have this and this and this and be nice and balanced. And this person has a weakness here. So we're gonna shore up their weakness. I don't care about your weakness. I know about it. That's critical number one. What I need to do is make a team that can support your weakness so that you can be the best that you can be on your strength. And I think that's where sports comes into um cybersecurity. And if we um embrace more of that coaching uh in our socks, um in our um hunt teams, and in our cybersecurity special ops teams, etc., what you'll see is a um a drastic change in morale, right? Uh because of confidence um and because of trust. When you understand what everybody's role is and everybody's allowed to be who they are to their fullest ability, you're building trust. And that kind of trust, it can change worlds. And I think that's what I'm excited about. But again, it's it's it's communicating that out. Um, I have a lot of folks, we're always looking for good coaches. And for season six, we have open applications right now for coaching. And many of the coaches come in and they're like, These folks are brilliant. I I can't teach them anything. I don't need you to teach them. I need you to coach them. And coaching is different, right? It's being there for them. Yes, you're nurturing them, you're pushing them, you're saying, What if you did this? Um, you're showing them what their skills are, um, you're helping them from a professional standpoint. That's the kind of coach we need. But we also need somebody who knows how to play the game. Um, because uh one of the things we changed in the past year with our coaching and mentor interviews is I always ask, Do you play the game? Are you willing to roll up your sleeves and actually get into an attack and defense game? Um, that's what the players want. They want a coach that's willing to be in the trenches with them. Funny, isn't that what a security operator wants out of a manager? Somebody who's willing to be in the trenches when things really hit the fan. You know, be there for them, know what their life is like so that you have an appreciation, but still be a coach, still be a manager.

SPEAKER_01 37:36

Absolutely. Well, I can't think of a better place to kind of start wrapping it up. Um, that that's I agree wholeheartedly. It goes back to that conversation we talk all about all the time in leadership about you know, what's the difference between a leader and a boss? You know, and I always I always see that visual of the giant rock, and people are pulling the rock, and the boss is standing on top of the rock, telling people to pull harder, and the leader is at the front of the line with the rope, leading by example, pulling everyone behind them. And exactly that's where that's what coaches should be. That's what our leadership in cybersecurity should be. Um, we have a we're blessed to have a great team that that nurtures us here at alias. Um, but yeah, so um just to wrap up, if you're you're looking for coaches, you're also looking for sponsors. Um, so where can people go for some more information if they want a sponsor, if they want to sign up to coach, where can they find the information?

SPEAKER_02 38:39

Absolutely. Go to uscybergames.com. Uh if you're interested in the US Cyber team, uscybergames.com. If you're interested in hosting a game, um, looking at a league, or doing something international, um, uh visit playsyber.com.

SPEAKER_01 38:55

Awesome. And you also have your own podcast, PlayCyber. Um that's that's on Spotify. Um, and I encourage if you're interested in cognitive behavior, if you're interested in cyber games, if you're interested in anything we've talked about today, also tune into that podcast as well. Um, but uh thank you. This has been another episode of Secure AF Podcast with our special guest, Jessica Golak, um, commissioner, founder of U.S. Cyber Games. Um, thank you, Jessica, for being on the show.

SPEAKER_02 39:25

Thank you so much, Will. I really appreciate it.

SPEAKER_01 39:27

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 39:35

The Secure AF Podcast is a production of Aliot Cybersecurity. Visit us online at aliot cybersecurity.com. All rights reserved.