Advancing Cybersecurity from San Antonio to the Alamo College District

San Antonio's Expanding Role in National Cybersecurity

San Antonio continues to solidify its position as one of America's most critical cybersecurity hubs. At Cyber Fiesta Week 2026, leaders from across the industry gathered to discuss the threats that extend well beyond traditional software vulnerabilities — and the defenses that must evolve to meet them.

The presentations underscored a reality that many organizations still underestimate: attackers are no longer limited to exploiting software. The next wave of threats targets the physical layer — hardware, power systems, and the infrastructure that underpins our digital world.

Novel Attack Vectors: Beyond Software

Corrina Alcoser, Chief Information Security Officer of The AI Cowboys and creator of the R-O-D-E-O cybersecurity program, delivered a presentation on emerging attack vectors that most security teams are not prepared for. The focus was on threats that operate beneath the software stack:

Power usage patterns that reveal system behavior and can be analyzed to extract sensitive data

Weak points in advanced hardware systems that allow attackers to bypass software-level defenses entirely

Side-channel attacks that exploit physical characteristics of computing systems rather than code vulnerabilities

These are not theoretical risks. They represent an active and growing category of threat activity that organizations — particularly those operating critical infrastructure — must account for in their defensive strategies.

R-O-D-E-O: Comprehensive Threat Detection

The R-O-D-E-O program was highlighted as an initiative designed to help organizations address this expanded threat landscape. R-O-D-E-O enables security teams to:

Detect threats across the full infrastructure stack, not just software endpoints

Identify unusual behavior in real time using AI-powered behavioral analysis

Address both software and hardware security risks within a unified operations platform

Support investigation and incident response workflows at machine speed

For organizations operating in defense, government, and critical infrastructure sectors, the ability to detect and respond to threats that span both digital and physical domains is no longer optional.

San Antonio's Strategic Position

San Antonio ranks second nationally for cybersecurity employment, a distinction driven by the convergence of military presence, world-class research institutions, and a thriving private sector security community.

Key figures supporting the presentations at Cyber Fiesta Week included Jacqueline Suttin and Michael Pendleton from the National Security Collaboration Center at UT San Antonio — further demonstrating the depth of the city's cybersecurity ecosystem.

What Organizations Should Do Now

The core message from Cyber Fiesta Week 2026 is clear: defensive strategies must evolve. Organizations should:

Look beyond software protection — expand threat models to include hardware and physical infrastructure

Understand side-channel threats — invest in training and tooling that addresses power analysis, electromagnetic emanation, and other physical attack vectors

Secure edge systems — as computing moves to the edge, so do the attack surfaces

Update defensive approaches — legacy tools built for software-only threats are insufficient for the current landscape

Protect decision-making systems — AI and autonomous systems that drive operational decisions must be hardened against manipulation

The cybersecurity community in San Antonio is leading the conversation on these issues. The question is whether the rest of the industry will keep pace.

Learn more about our cybersecurity services or contact our San Antonio team to discuss your organization's security posture.