The biggest barrier to entering the cybersecurity field isn't talent; it's the cost of tools. Proprietary SIEMs (Security Information and Event Management) are expensive, leaving students with "theory" but no "practice." As a community leader who has mentored over 10,000 aspiring engineers, I realized we needed a better way.

This session explores how we used OpenSearch to build a scalable, open-source Security Operations Center (SOC) for education. We will step through the architecture of a "Training Lab" where students can ingest real attack logs, visualize threats, and practice threat hunting—all without a corporate budget.

We will discuss:

The "Free Tier" Architecture: How to deploy a multi-tenant OpenSearch cluster on Kubernetes that scales to thousands of student workloads cost-effectively.

Gamification: Using OpenSearch Dashboards to build "Capture The Flag" (CTF) scoreboards that track student progress in real-time.

The Talent Pipeline: How this open-source approach creates a generation of engineers who are "OpenSearch Native" from day one.