Hundreds of attendees showed up at the College Station Hilton on Tuesday with that goal in mind as the third annual TEEX Cyber Readiness Summit kicked off.
The three-day summit regional conference hosted by Texas A&M Engineering Extension Service brought attendees from all over Texas and as far away as Pennsylvania and New Jersey to take part in the conference that focuses on strengthening cybersecurity awareness, preparedness and response.
Attendees included professionals who protect sensitive systems, data and services as well as local and state government leaders, emergency management and public safety officials, school district and higher education administrators.
Luke Strain, a network research engineer at the Bush Combat Development Complex at Texas A&M University’s RELLIS campus came to the summit knowing the importance of cybersecurity in his work but was impressed with how many different people showed up.
“TEEX has been a big organization within Texas for a long time so it’s exciting to see events like this grow and be able to host here. The biggest thing here is the importance of cybersecurity across all organizations, across all aspects of business and organizations,” Strain told the media during a break in the summit. “For me I want to be on the cutting edge, especially with cybersecurity research and artificial intelligence. There’s a lot of research teams [at Bush Combat Complex ] that are implementing AI in their research. I do work securing the research networks that we implement. When we are testing something, whatever network we have set up I make sure we are doing it securely and that our data is protected in the network and the test isn’t going to interrupt anything else.”
Cybersecurity has become an important part of every industry today. According to information from the World Economic Forum’s Global Cybersecurity Outlook 2026, phishing and cyber-enabled fraud have overtaken ransomware as the leading cybersecurity concern among global business leaders.
A survey conducted by Infosecurity Magazine and Accenture found that 77 percent of respondents reported a rise in cyber fraud and 62 percent of respondents aware of someone being affected by phishing. The survey also found invoice fraud (37 percent) and identity fraud (32 percent) to be other threats reported.
Bart Taylor, the training manager for TEEX, laid out the purpose of the summit in his opening comments.
“I'm honored to see this group full of leaders, educators, practitioners, and partners who care deeply about one thing and that's protecting the systems, the people, and the communities that depend on us,” Taylor said in his remarks. “You chose to be here, and you chose to step away from your desks, your inboxes, your day-to-day files, because you understand one thing, and that one important thing is cybersecurity is no longer just an IT issue. It's a leadership issue. It's a workforce issue. It's a community issue. And over the next three days, we're going to face this reality together.”
College Station Mayor John Nichols, TEEX director David Coatney and Lisa Mutchler, TEEX director of business and cyber solutions, also gave remarks.
“We want you to be engaged and have that energy. Ask those tough questions and also have that ability to network so that you do have those resources and who you can call on," Mutchler said. "We are all in this as one big grouping, no matter what sector you may represent.”
The third annual summit comes at a time when 25 percent of businesses reported being the victim of a cyber event — including Lee Enterprises, The Eagle's owner — and there is a 150 percent increase in companies reporting cyberattacks in the last 10 years while 56 percent of businesses list a security breach or hacker as their top cyber concern.
Daniel “Rags” Ragsdale gave the keynote address to open the conference. Ragsdale, A&M Class of 1980 who founded the Texas A&M cybersecurity center in 2015, spoke on leading through the next generation of cyber threats and interacted with members of the audience inside the Brazos Amphitheater.
“This is not new to me. And it's an area that I've followed and tracked ever since," he said. "Now, is there hype [about AI]? Sure, there's hype. It is too late to continue to have anyone have their head in the sand. It's changing all of our work, all of our interactions, in good ways and bad ways. It is changing everything.”
The summit included several small group discussions on a wide range of topics from AI and security to identity theft in the age of AI as well as discussions on strengthening the human firewall behind cyber defense and making sense of cyber frameworks.
Taylor shared his excitement at being able to bring so many people together for the third annual summit.
“When I came on the job at TEEX it was great to see that we were putting together a cyber readiness summit to really propel and bolster our cyber across the state,” Taylor said. “The biggest thing I’m excited for is just bringing our local community together. I came [to TEEX] from College Station ISD so supporting this community, supporting everyone that lives here has always been my mission. We really wanted to make this summit accessible to [both the] private [sector] and public and to everybody. Everybody is here. It’s a good cross-section of the community and the state.”
Ragsdale, founder and owner of Full Spectrum Cyber Solutions and a former deputy assistant national cyber director, noted that when he graduated from A&M computer science was known as computing science.
“I think it increasingly matters to all of us. I think our livelihoods, our critical infrastructure, our information that we would like to remain private, it's all tied to this issue of cybersecurity,” Ragsdale said. “Everybody that’s out there just doing their jobs need to have a better awareness and better understanding of the threats that are out there. It makes it incumbent upon leaders to help ensure that their people understand what they need to know, what they need to be able to do. It’s one of those things that’s no longer optional.”
The summit continues at the Hilton College Station through Thursday afternoon. More information can be found at teex.org/teex-cyber-readiness-summit.
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