Connar McCasland
Instructor, Center for Cybersecurity at the University of West Florida
Pensacola, Florida, United States
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Connar McCasland is an instructor at the University of West Florida Center for Cybersecurity. Her career spans public and private sectors, particularly excelling in cybersecurity for county and city government entities. Before her teaching career, she held a leadership role in local government, where she spearheaded a county’s cybersecurity program. There, she led and organized significant cybersecurity projects and assisted smaller government offices with their cybersecurity programs. While in this role, employees often told her that cybersecurity was “only IT’s problem” and “too difficult to understand.” Since then, she has made it her mission to show people how critical cybersecurity is in the current digital age and make it accessible and easy to understand. Before working for the Center, she worked for Texas A&M Engineering Extension Service (TEEX), where she traveled across the U.S. and its territories, training IT departments, emergency management, first responders, and average citizens in cybersecurity and cyber preparedness. Beyond her professional achievements, Connar actively works to empower and promote other IT and cybersecurity professionals, participating in international organizations such as ISACA and Women in Cybersecurity (WiCyS). She holds a B.A.S. in Cybersecurity from Pensacola State College and an M.S. in Information Assurance and Cybersecurity with a specialization in Network Defense from Capella University. She serves on the Board of Directors for the nonprofit IT Gulf Coast and is the Social Media Coordinator for the WiCyS Florida Affiliate.
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Chart Your Own Path: Navigating Cybersecurity Certifications
Breaking into cybersecurity doesn’t have to follow the same old script—get an IT degree, work helpdesk, and wait your turn. In today’s fast-moving landscape, certifications can offer an alternative route—one that lets you dare to disrupt the traditional pathway and take control of your own journey.
This session is designed for entry-to-mid-level professionals who are ready to carve out a future in cybersecurity, whether you’re pivoting from another career or aiming to level up your current role. We’ll cut through the noise of endless certification options and focus on how to strategically choose credentials that match your goals, interests, and experience.
We’ll break down popular certifications into meaningful categories—entry-level (like CompTIA Security+), mid-career (such as CySA+ or CEH), and aspirational (like CISSP or CISM). You’ll learn how to identify what’s right for you, based on where you are now and where you want to go next.
You'll also get practical advice on how to prep for certifications, find reliable study resources, and balance learning with life and work. Whether you're transitioning from a non-tech background or want to skip the helpdesk and go straight into security, this session will empower you with the tools and confidence to chart your own path in cybersecurity.
Lessons in Human Hacking... From My Cat
Understanding Social Engineering Through the Eyes of a Furry Adversary
Even the most secure systems have one consistent vulnerability: people. As cybersecurity professionals, we spend our days hardening networks, securing endpoints, and writing detection rules, but we still get tripped up by the same tactics my cat uses to get fed early or steal my chair. Why? Because social engineering is rooted in human psychology, not code, and attackers know exactly how to exploit it.
In this talk, we’ll take a playful but insightful dive into the psychology of social engineering, using everyday examples from life with a manipulative cat. We'll break down tactics like pretexting, baiting, urgency, and authority, showing how they mirror common cyberattacks like phishing, smishing, and impersonation scams. From an attacker crafting a spear-phishing email to my cat pretending he’s starving (again), the principles are remarkably the same.
This session is designed for technical pros who understand the tech but want to better defend against the human layer of risk. You’ll leave with practical insights into how attackers gather context (often via OSINT), build believable narratives, and bypass technical controls by targeting people, plus a few laughs and a healthy respect for feline threat actors.
Because if you can’t outsmart your cat, how are you going to outsmart a hacker?
Hack the House: Securing Smart Homes in the IoT Era
As our homes become increasingly integrated with smart devices, the risk of cyber vulnerabilities rises. In this presentation, we unveil the hidden threats that lurk within our smart homes. We will explore definitions of smart devices, examining both centralized and autonomous home architectures. The session will highlight real-life cases of hacked smart devices, revealing alarming incidents such as unauthorized camera access and the terrifying breach of baby monitors. Attendees will learn how to identify signs of compromised devices and discover practical strategies to safeguard their homes against cyber threats. By empowering participants with knowledge, this presentation aims to foster a culture of proactive cybersecurity awareness in the realm of smart technology.
Your Secrets Are Showing: What Hackers Can Find Online
Think your organization is locked down? Think again. Even without breaching your firewall, attackers can gather a surprising amount of intel just by using publicly available information. This session dives into the world of Open-Source Intelligence (OSINT) and how hackers use it to build attack strategies without ever touching your internal systems.
We’ll explore how data from your website, job postings, social media, metadata, DNS records, GitHub repos, and even Google searches can be pieced together to map your digital footprint. You’ll see real-world examples of how seemingly harmless information, such as employee roles, email naming conventions, and forgotten subdomains, can provide attackers with everything they need to craft phishing emails, bypass security questions, or find vulnerable infrastructure.
This talk is ideal for IT professionals, security teams, and leadership looking to understand their organization’s public exposure from an attacker’s perspective. We’ll walk through simple, free OSINT tools and techniques you can use to audit your own organization and show you how to reduce your attack surface before someone else takes advantage of it.
Don’t wait for an incident to find out what the internet knows about you. Join us to learn how to spot and seal those digital leaks before they become real-world threats.
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Connar McCasland
Instructor, Center for Cybersecurity at the University of West Florida
Pensacola, Florida, United States
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