Page 57 - BusinessWest December 8, 2025

“When people talk
about AI being
a threat, what
they really mean
is generative AI
being a threat,
large language
models being a
threat. And just
like AI had been
used for defensive
good purposes
before, we can still
take generative AI
and use it for good
purposes as well.”
ations centers like the one now located at the Richard E.
Neal Cybersecurity Center of Excellence in Springfield,
which help organizations detect, prevent, and respond to
threats.
“That’s a burgeoning field, being the individual who
looks at a dashboard, sees all the information coming in,
and makes conclusions and reports and even post-mor-
tem analysis,” O’Brien explained. “Even after something
has gone wrong, you need the individual who’s going to
say, ‘well, here’s how it went wrong,’ and provide that
report to the C-suite in an organization.”
Then there are individuals moving to cybersecurity
from other fields — or vice versa — and incorporating it
into other disciplines.
“I want to have folks who are managers, essentially,
who are able to take all of this information, come up
with security plans and risk management scenarios,
and talk about security architecture and those kinds of
things, because those don’t change no matter what goes
on with the technology,” O’Brien told BusinessWest. “In
my time — and I’ve been doing this since I was a kid,
essentially — I have seen technology shift so much, but
the fundamentals don’t change.”
In short, it’s a field broad enough to welcome people
from any discipline or interest, and that, combined with the fact
that it’s certain to remain important, makes cybersecurity an attrac-
tive career option.
“You’ve got to have the hunger for it, certainly,” he added. “That’s
why it’s always fun to be around other cyber folks, because they’re
always energetic.”
Future Shock
The keynote address at the Cybersecurity Summit was delivered
by Scott Shapiro, a professor at Yale Law School. O’Brien met him
years ago when he worked there, and the two of them co-founded a
cybersecurity lab for Yale law students.
Sean O’Brien (right) conducts a ‘fireside chat’ with Yale
Law School Professor Scott Shapiro about advances in
cybersecurity and AI during the recent summit.
“We took folks who are non-technical, primarily — great legal
minds, certainly, but not technical people — and we got them to use
the command line. We got them to do hacks on their own,” O’Brien
said. “We would say, ‘here’s why strong passwords are important. By
the way, here’s how to crack a weak password.’”
Now in charge of Bay Path’s cybersecurity program, O’Brien is
passionate about sparking that interest in young people.
“Bay Path, an amazing program, really has an innovative
approach, which is one of the reasons they recruited me,” he told
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