By: Cassidy Delamarter, USF College of Education
The University of South Florida’s College of Education turned the spotlight on one
of today’s fastest-growing security challenges: how individuals and societies think,
learn and make decisions in an increasingly AI-enabled world.
Cognitive security addresses how information — and misinformation — can be used to
manipulate behavior, shape beliefs and influence decision-making. These challenges
are increasingly tied to AI, social media and advanced technologies.
At the 2026 CognetCon, co-organized by the Cognitive Security Institute, the college welcomed a mix of
educators, researchers, government and industry leaders to identify ways systems can
be manipulated against us. With attendees from the National Institute of Standards
and Technology, a key goal of the two-day conference was active discussions around
the development of global standards for cognitive security to ensure people can continue
to think for themselves.
“In a world where everything is becoming about knowledge and information, everything
increasingly becomes about education to some extent,” said Nathan Fisk, assistant
professor in the USF College of Education, whose work sits at the intersection of
cybersecurity, learning sciences and community resilience.
Fisk leads a course on Digital Media and Learning, while serving as one of the College
of Education’s key faculty focused on cybersecurity education. Fisk’s work spans research
and real-world application. Most recently, he helped lead a hands-on cybersecurity
challenge at DEF CON, one of the world’s largest hacking conferences, where the USF
College of Education supported a mock water plant that participants could attempt
to hack on the floor of the Las Vegas Convention Center.
“Whether we’re talking about power plants, water systems, supply chains or elections,
critical infrastructure is ultimately about people,” Fisk said. “How do we protect
critical infrastructure and protect communities when everything is increasingly AI
enabled?”
The urgency of this work continues to grow. In December, the North Atlantic Treaty
Organization (NATO) released a major report on cognitive warfare, which examined the effects of technology on human behavior and underscored the global
need to address cognitive security.
“Lots of businesses think about protecting themselves and their assets because ‘bad
guys’ are going to come after their business, but they don’t always think about bad
guys coming after individuals in their business and coming after the people and their
personal information directly,” said Jeff Jockisch, conference attendee and managing
partner of Obscure IQ. “Cognitive security is a new threat surface that we have to
take into account.”
Like Fisk, Jockisch feels the conference served as an opportunity for different groups
of people to come together and shape outcomes.
“One of the things that I’m excited about, at least relative to the future of the
College of Education in this space, is to kind of establish education as one of the
dominant disciplines by which we can come to understand some of these critical national
security challenges,” Fisk said.
link