Michael Aspland, the Executive Director of the Sam Houston State University Institute for Homeland Security, speaks to students participating in the inaugural leadership training course, part of a collaborative series between Texas Southmost College and Sam Houston State University, on October 24, 2023, at the Oliveira Student Center.
In collaboration with the Institute of Homeland Security at Sam Houston State University, Texas Southmost College is hosting a free series of leadership training sessions to address modern-day cybersecurity issues.
The sessions, consisting of morning and afternoon courses, are to be held in TSC’s Jacob Brown Auditorium located at 600 International Blvd in Brownsville on the following days and times.
| Date | Time | Subject |
| November 14, 2023 | 9:00 am | Intellectual Property Security |
| November 14, 2023 | 1:30 pm | Insider Threat Management |
| December 13, 2023 | 9:00 am | Security & Drones Robots |
| December 13, 2023 | 1:30 pm | Drones Practicum |
As modern technology continues to advance at a rapid rate, a byproduct of this advancement is the need for more of these technologies to request personal information from their users. Because of this, cybersecurity and the need to protect one’s personal information have become issues of critical importance.
Michael Aspland, Executive Director for the Institute of Homeland Security, wants sessions such as these to provide Texas Southmost College students, staff, and business professionals with information to help them understand the variety of with information to help them understand the variety of different threats to cybersecurity infrastructure so that they can better protect themselves.
“The overall goal for us at the Institute of Homeland Security if to improve the resiliency and security of our critical infrastructure sectors,” said Aspland, and by helping to share knowledge on how to focus on security and resiliency with professionals in this space, it’ll help make Texas a safer space.”
The sessions, which will continue to run throughout November and December, cover a robust selection of topics related to cybersecurity, from protection of intellectual property to understanding the nature insider threats and how to manage them.
Additionally, there is a fair amount of focus devoted to physical security in each session. To Scott McHugh, Program Executive for the Institute of Homeland Security, the convergence cybersecurity and physical security is something that has always been an inevitability.
“We are in the space now in which there is almost no daylight between cybersecurity and physical security,” said McHugh. “There used to be, and it used to make sense that you had two different functions that were doing, in essence, similar things but still different enough to where it really wasn’t important for both to be combined.”
For more information on the sessions, please visit Executive Leadership for CIP Training – Brownsville (ihsonline.org)
Scott McHugh, Project Manager of the Chemical Critical Infrastructure Sector, Sam Houston State University Institute for Homeland Security, speaks to students participating in the inaugural leadership training course, part of a collaborative series between Texas Southmost College and Sam Houston State University, on October 24, 2023, at the Oliveira Student Center.
