Working Connections Summer Online 2026

Hands-On SecAI+

Securing AI Systems and Building AI-Powered Cybersecurity Tools for the Classroom

July 20–24, 2026 · 9:30 AM – 5:30 PM Central · Online

About This Workshop

A 5-day intensive track for IT and cybersecurity instructors at community colleges. We'll go hands-on with AI security — standing up local models, attacking and defending LLM deployments, building SOC automation tools, and wiring it all into your classroom — then close with a proctored, auto-graded CompTIA SecAI+ (CY0-001) blueprint exam.

Audience: Intermediate; Security+ assumed. Comfortable at the CLI and able to read/run Python. Target cert: SecAI+ (CY0-001 V1) — four domains (AI Concepts 17%, Securing AI 40%, AI-Assisted Security 24%, AI Governance/Risk/Compliance 19%).

All labs run two ways: on a cloud VM (SSH, guaranteed parity) and as downloadable Docker Compose bundles you can take back to your classroom. All images are digest-pinned; CPU-only laptops are sufficient.

Schedule at a Glance

July 20–24, 2026 · 9:30 AM – 5:30 PM Central daily

Day 1

Mon, Jul 20

D1 (17%)

AI Foundations + Shared Vocabulary

Ollama setup · Prompt engineering · RAG pipeline

Day 2

Tue, Jul 21

D2.1–2.3 (part of 40%)

Threat Model + Lock the Front Door

OWASP LLM Top 10 attacks · Prompt firewall · Rate/token limits

Day 3

Wed, Jul 22

D2.4–2.6 + D4 (19%)

Defense in Depth + Rules of the Road

Prompt-injection/jailbreak · PII redaction · NIST AI RMF mapping

Day 4

Thu, Jul 23

D3 (24%)

AI as SOC / Classroom Force-Multiplier

MCP server (log triage / CVE summarization) · Sigma/Snort rule gen · AI-assisted vuln triage

AM: week-in-review · PM: exam + lab catch-up

Prerequisites

Security+ knowledge (assumed, not enforced)
Comfortable with a terminal / CLI (Linux or macOS preferred; WSL on Windows)
Able to read and run Python scripts
Docker Desktop installed and working — or plan to use the cloud VM (see Setup & Prereqs)
SSH client installed (ssh on macOS/Linux; PuTTY or Windows OpenSSH)
16 GB RAM recommended for local Docker labs; 8 GB → cloud VM
Access code + cloud VM credentials — distributed out-of-band at workshop start

Instructor

Jason Zeller

Faculty, FHSU Informatics
Director of Operations, Cybersecurity Institute
Owner, CypherAxe
Founder, Post Rock Data Solutions

Jason designed this workshop around the real-world tools he uses daily: local LLMs for low-trust tasks, MCP servers for SOC automation, and prompt-hardened pipelines for classroom AI tools.