Vision in Action
Meet Cole
Cole is 17 years old and about half way through his junior year at a public high school outside of San Francisco. His mother works in healthcare and his father is a civil engineer for their local town. He runs track, built his own gaming computer, and manages the website pages for many high school clubs.
He enjoys helping his community and family either by volunteering at the food pantry or being the go-to tech support. While Cole knows he enjoys computers and helping others, he isn’t sure how these could integrate into his post-high school plan.
Career & Community Connect
On the day of the field trip, Cole and students from ten different high schools arrive at the convention center and are welcomed by cybersecurity professionals from across the world. The students step directly into a live cybersecurity simulation. Working in teams, they are challenged to defend a mock city’s digital infrastructure after a coordinated cyberattack knocks out traffic systems, hospital records, and power grids. Students must analyze live data, identify vulnerabilities, deploy defenses, and communicate their response strategy under timed conditions.
The students also rotate through various immersive stations hosted by industry sponsors like a digital forensics lab, where students recover lost data from compromised devices, and a career pathways lab, where students map routes into cybersecurity through high school courses, certifications, military service, community college, and four-year universities.
Unlike a typical expo-style visit, students do not simply wander booths. Instead, small groups of students are matched with industry mentors who guide them through targeted conversations on the conference floor based on their interests.
A Growing Industry
Cybersecurity is one of the fastest-growing fields in the country, with a critical shortage of professionals trained to protect digital infrastructure across healthcare, banking, education, and government systems. Despite strong salaries and job stability, for every 100 jobs there are only about 74 employees to fill them. Many high school students don’t truly understand what cybersecurity professionals actually do or how the basic coding classes their high school offers connect to this career path.
During his junior year, Cole enrolls in a computer science course where he becomes fascinated by ethical hacking, data protection, and network security. Cole jumps at the opportunity when his teacher shares that RSA, a top global cybersecurity community, is hosting their conference, RSAC, in San Francisco.
Impact
By the end of the day, Cole no longer thinks of technology as just a hobby. He sees cybersecurity as a mission-driven career that protects people, systems, and communities. Over the next few months, he works with his parents and school counselor to adjust his senior year schedule, enrolls in a pre-college cybersecurity bootcamp through Illinois Tech who he met at RSAC. He begins viewing himself not just as “good with computers,” but as someone who can “do good with computers”.
For the conference host and participating companies, the student experience becomes one of the most talked-about components of the entire event. Many companies gain a pipeline of highly motivated prospective students and future professionals. Exhibitors collect interest forms from students eager for mentorship, internships, and training programs. Several companies commit funding to expand the youth experience at the next conference, and the association uses the program as a national model for early workforce pipeline development.