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70 SMT007 MAGAZINE I MARCH 2019 that transition and be successful. You ran a workshop here yesterday. Humphreys: Yes, it was very interesting. This is my first real exposure to this component of IEEE. Man, it made me feel old, but it just seemed like just the other day I was in their seats. I was telling some of the students in the competition that we were in, which I'll get into in a little bit, that they are very fortunate to have undergraduate academic programs now that can give them these skill sets. I'm prior military and a product of being in the right place at the right time. There wasn't that con- ventional academic route to career paths that we're in right now. I find that really refreshing, and the kids I saw yesterday were extremely intelligent. I think the one thing I was trying to instill in them is having street smarts as well. It's good to have book smarts, but there's a skill set to be able to translate the technical stuff they're doing every day to an executive and keep it at a third-grade level, I joked. That's a skill set that they should definitely work on. I think they found that very rewarding and never thought about it, but I could see a lot of their eyes light up seeing how that would be important. That was my great partition of wisdom, if you will, to the younger generation. The competition I mentioned earlier also went really well. It was based on a national- level exercise that I participated in earlier this year, which simulated a major natural disaster with a cyberattack—a time where we would be very vulnerable while recovering from the di- saster. We did some injects from that scenario with them to not only think from the tactical perspective of hands-on keyboards getting sys- tems back up but also the strategic idea around what capabilities exist that they could leverage to help them in that kind of a scenario. Think- ing through the big picture scenario was some- thing they hadn't seen before, and I think they got a lot out of it. Johnson: Interesting. What do you think some of their key takeaways were based student feedback? Humphreys: The feedback I received from stu- dents has been before the competition yes- terday and before they were exposed to me, I think they tended to put themselves in a box career-wise such as, "I want to be an engineer that works on this system," or, "I want to be an expert in this singular system." I think my ex- posure showed them that their skill set is much broader than what they might think they want to do. It's great to have a singular scope if you're passionate about one thing and do it well, but don't get stuck in that rut because you might plateau. Then, 20 years later, you may be the expert on one system, but you could have done so much more with that skill set. I think for college kids especially, that was refreshing to hear because they might be on one track and not realize what opportu- nities are out there for them. Johnson: Correct me if I'm wrong, but one of the basic tenets of security of any sort is to expect the unexpected, and how can you do cybersecurity if you're not also in that situa- tion? Getting yourself into a technical skills box takes away that ability to non-linearly look at what's happening and deduce what's going on. Humphreys: Absolutely. I'm the complete op- posite. I never imagined being in this career field. The door opened up, and I went through it. I've learned the technical side on the back- end whereas these kids are learning the tech- nical side up front, but they also need to have street smarts for the broader concept of what their skill set can offer in the world. Again, I just