Derek Walker honored for outstanding leadership
Metro State University student Derek Walker has been named the Visionary Leadership Awards’ 2023 Visionary Student for the 13th Annual Cyber Security Summit, which will be held in Minneapolis on October 25. The Visionary Student Award goes to a student who has demonstrated outstanding leadership and/or contributions.
Walker is studying cybersecurity while working full time as an information security specialist. Walker is focused on simplifying cybersecurity for small and medium-sized businesses, and his capstone is dedicated to eliminating cost and complexity barriers to empower small and medium-sized businesses to implement robust cybersecurity programs. His expertise has extended to the Metro State Collegiate Cybersecurity Defense Competition team, where he served as the domain name system admin and created essential scripts for tasks including critical backups, role-based firewall deployment, and red-team persistence detection.
The Cyber Security Summit, hosted by Red Sift, is the original global cyber security event. The Summit was established by founding partners Eileen Manning of The Event Group and the University of Minnesota Technological Leadership Insititute. The Visionary Leadership Awards, also known as The Morries™, after Robert Tappan Morris, celebrate visionary leaders in nine categories of academic, industry, and government professionals and students. Visit the Cyber Security Summit website for more information about the Summit and the Visionary Leadership Awards.