Nation-state cyber threats get serious attention at the leadership level. Security teams track the advisories. Executives get the briefings. However, somewhere between the intelligence report and the plant floor, the warehouse, the clinic, and the IT help desk — the message stops traveling.

And that gap is exactly where attackers find their way in.

This session is about closing the distance between what security leaders know about geopolitical cyber risk and what frontline workers in critical infrastructure environments actually understand about their role in defending against it. Because the IT admin at a regional energy provider, the procurement coordinator at a mid-size manufacturer, and the clinic scheduler at a regional health system — they're all part of the threat surface. They just don't know it yet.

Lakeidra Smith draws on her background in cybersecurity education and curriculum design to break down how nation-state tactics translate into day-to-day risk for workers across Manufacturing, Energy, Healthcare, and Technology — and what it actually looks like to build threat awareness at every level of an organization, not just at the top.

Attendees will leave with a communication framework for translating geopolitical threat intelligence into language that resonates with non-technical employees, a tiered education model that meets workers where they are, and concrete examples of how frontline behavior has been the deciding factor in both successful attacks and near-misses on critical infrastructure.

Because your perimeter is only as strong as the person who least understands why it matters.