If you’ve driven a car, used cloud services or even turned on a smart faucet, you’ve likely benefited from the cybersecurity expertise of someone in the Kettering University network.
In an increasingly connected world, the opportunities to harness new technology for a better, safer future are nearly limitless. But so are the opportunities for malicious actors looking to exploit vulnerabilities. In 2023, cyberattacks continued to escalate, with hackers launching attacks every 39 seconds, totaling approximately 2,200 attacks daily.
To understand how industries are protecting themselves, we spoke with experts who are shaping the future of cybersecurity—leaders who think ahead of the next attack, not just react to it.
Kristie Pfosi Is charting her own course
“Everything is connected now, which means the attack surface—and the threat landscape—are enormous,” says Kristie Pfosi ‘07 (Mechanical Engineering and Electrical Engineering), Global Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) for Marelli. “It’s exploded in the past 10 years.”
Pfosi understands the scale of the challenge. Early in her career, she worked in a CIA operations center during the hunt for Osama bin Laden. Since then, she’s tackled some of the most high-stakes cybersecurity environments, from automotive security at Fiat Chrysler to enterprise security at Delta Faucet, a $2.5 billion company that experiences an attempted cyberattack every 200 milliseconds.
A Top Woman in Cyber, a defining moment came in 2015, when security researchers remotely hacked a Jeep Cherokee on the highway, exposing vulnerabilities in connected vehicles. “It was a wake-up call,” she says. “At that time, there was no such thing as an ‘automotive cybersecurity professional’—the industry had to build the field from scratch.”
Pfosi helped lead that charge, co-authoring the first industry-wide best practices for automotive cybersecurity, which still shape the field today. Now, she’s focused on protecting connected devices across industries and believes cybersecurity must be ingrained in an organization’s DNA.
“My experience at Kettering taught me to think holistically,” she says. “The higher I go in an organization, the more I realize that cybersecurity isn’t just an IT problem—it’s an everyone problem.”
Hemanth Tadepalli wants to secure the world
Plenty of high school students dream about shaping the future. Hemanth Tadepalli ’23 (Computer Science) made it happen.
“I was always interested in cybersecurity, forensics, policy and government,” he says. “I wanted to strategize the best ways to defend and secure the world as technology advances.”
At Kettering, he found a way to do just that. He studied computer science, minored in cybersecurity and entrepreneurship, and took on leadership roles—from student body vice president to competing at Harvard with Kettering’s Model UN team.
His approach paid off. After working as a Co-op student for Google and cybersecurity firm Mandiant, he pivoted to his current role as a cybersecurity compliance engineer at May Mobility, helping secure autonomous vehicles from cyber threats.
At the FutureCon cybersecurity conference, he spoke alongside Kristie Pfosi on the next wave of cybersecurity challenges. And while cyber breaches make headlines daily, Tadepalli knows real success means staying out of the news.
“When it comes to keeping the bad guys away, the goal is simple: never be the story.”
Dr. Rui Zhu pushes the field—and his students—forward
Cyber threats are constantly evolving—which means cybersecurity education has to move even faster.
Dr. Rui Zhu, assistant professor of computer science, spent years tackling cybersecurity challenges in the industry. At Verizon, he simulated cyberattacks on autonomous mobile robots, uncovering vulnerabilities in machine communications.
Now, at Kettering, he’s taking those lessons into research and the classroom. His work focuses on securing vehicle-to-everything (V2X) communication systems, which allow cars to talk to each other and to road infrastructure—technology that could revolutionize traffic safety but also introduce new cyber risks.
His students don’t just learn theory—they practice cybersecurity in real-world scenarios by:
- Hacking into test networks to uncover vulnerabilities
- Setting up “evil twin” Wi-Fi networks to study phishing attacks
- Analyzing real cyber threats affecting critical infrastructure
“We’re not just teaching students how to patch vulnerabilities,” he says. “We’re training them to think ahead of threats—to stay one step ahead.”
How Kettering is optimizing cybersecurity education
Cybersecurity isn’t just a tech problem—it’s an economic imperative. The demand for cybersecurity professionals is growing 32% faster than the average for all jobs, and companies need experts who think like attackers to build better defenses.
As industries face increasingly sophisticated threats, those shaping the field aren’t just reacting to attacks—they’re building a safer future, one system at a time.
Learn more about cybersecurity research and education.
