From Pennsylvania Kid to UNLV CISO: A Cybersecurity Career Journey with Vito Rocco | Ep041

Episode Information Show Notes What does it take to go from a curious kid tinkering with an Apple IIe computer to leading cybersecurity at a major university? Vito Rocco’s journey offers a masterclass in career development, strategic thinking, and the power of continuous learning. Currently serving as Chief Information Security Officer at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, Vito brings a unique perspective shaped by small-town Pennsylvania roots, military service, and the challenging world of higher education cybersecurity. His story demonstrates how curiosity, adaptability, and strong communication skills can transform a career trajectory. Episode Highlights: The Foundation Years: Discover how summer access to his teacher-father’s Apple IIe computer sparked a lifelong passion for technology, leading to building computers in high school and becoming the go-to tech person among peers. Military Transformation: Learn why Vito chose military service over traditional college, his initial role in artillery, and the strategic decision to reclassify into cybersecurity during the field’s early expansion. Skills Development: Understand the value of military training programs, the importance of certifications, and how hands-on experience with different cybersecurity domains shaped his expertise. Higher Education Challenges: Get insider perspective on the unique security challenges universities face, balancing academic freedom with protection, and why traditional corporate security approaches don’t always work in educational settings. Leadership Evolution: Explore the transition from technical expert to organizational leader, including the communication skills required to influence without authority and build support for security initiatives. Career Advice: Gain practical insights on the importance of IT fundamentals, the value of professional networking, and why understanding business context is essential for cybersecurity success. Vito’s journey illustrates that there’s no single path to cybersecurity leadership. Whether you’re starting in military service, traditional IT roles, or considering a career change, this conversation provides actionable insights for building expertise and advancing your career in the rapidly expanding cybersecurity field. TranscriptionManuel: Welcome everyone. My name is Manuel Martinez and this is another episode of Career Downloads. For each episode, I basically hit the refresh button, bring on a different guest to learn more about their background, their experiences, and really what got them interested in technology and how they managed to navigate their career over time. For today’s episode, I have with me Vito Rocco. So I’m pretty excited about this one. So he is a CISO for UNLV and we’ll get into that conversation but a lot of his background, just the way that he navigated and eventually got into that type of role, I think is very interesting. So I’m looking forward to this conversation. And with that, I’ll go ahead and introduce Vito. How’s it going? Vito: Great, thanks for having me. Manuel: I appreciate you coming on and being able to share your experiences. Vito: Yeah, absolutely. I’m glad to be here. Manuel: So if you don’t mind, just kind of summarize for us and kind of give us some of your background is kind of where you grew up. And then we’ll kind of follow that story into what got you into technology. Vito: So I grew up in Pennsylvania, little town north of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. And I’m the oldest of six kids. I have five brothers and sisters. And so grew up in a big family. And I sort of always had an interest in technology growing up. These were the days before every household had a computer. But my dad was a teacher. And so he had a computer in his classroom and every summer he got to bring home the computer. And so we had this, it was an Apple IIe computer that was sort of my first intro to technology or IT. And every summer we got to spend a lot of time, mostly playing games, but also I learned a little bit of BASIC, the coding language BASIC on there. And just a little bit about general, in general how to use a computer and how to navigate file systems and things like that, using the five and a quarter inch floppy disks. (both laughing) Yeah. Yeah, so that was kind of my start into it. And we had that computer every summer and my brothers and sisters and I spent a lot of hours on that sort of navigating it. Manuel: And it’s funny because it probably at that time, it’s something fun, it’s something new, but especially at that time with computers being new, it wasn’t really like, oh, there’s a career in this. So it’s just, you’re just curious and you’re learning that. And I’m sure at some point you’re also, because it sounds, I remember my kind of first experiences with computers too when I got to school, like I remember the Oregon Trail. So like, you had the computer class and you were doing a lot of that. Vito: Absolutely. Manuel: It wasn’t a career, but you enjoyed that. And then, that was your first introduction. What kind of transpired from there? Vito: Yeah, so I mean, I continued to want to learn about it. Like you said, at the time, I wasn’t really thinking of it as a career field or something to do for a living, but it was something that intrigued me and interests me. And so, I wanted to get more into it. And so, using and learning more about the computers. And like, it’s funny you mentioned the Oregon Trail. I just said, I said the other day to my wife, look, you weren’t a kid in the eighties if you didn’t die of dysentery at least once, right? We all died of dysentery at least once. But yeah, things like that were, sort of held my interest around it. And I, maybe I didn’t even realize at the time that I was sort of learning about technology at the same time while playing these entertaining games and these interesting games. And so, from there, as I got older, I sort of kept that interest and that want to learn more about technology. And I started building my own computers in high school, the early days of high school. And I sort of became the tech guy that people would come to and ask questions like, oh, we don’t know how to do this on the computer. Let’s ask Vito about it. And that sort of thing. So I sort of evolved and just kept being intrigued by technology and by computers and kept learning more and more from there. Manuel: And the need or the want to kind of build computers, was it, did you, I’ve had different people give me different stories. Was it, I wanted something better and faster? Was it really, I just want to see how this works? Vito: Yeah, it was more the latter for me. Like I want to know how it works, how all the pieces go together, how these things interact with each other. Sort of that like MacGyver mindset. You’ve watched the TV show MacGyver probably, you’re about the same generation as me. So knowing the science behind things and how things work and how you can put different things together to do something that maybe they weren’t intended to do. But I had that same intrigue with computers, like how do all these parts work together? How do I put them together and get them to work the way I want them to work? Manuel: Obviously just curiosity is helping build this. You’re continuing to go to school at some point. Like you said, we’re probably around the same generation. At one point, it almost starts to become kind of a requirement. Probably around high school time, like you have to, they want your papers typed. So you’ve got to print them out and do a lot of that. What did you think, at least around the high school age, what did you think that you were gonna do? Because again, technology was not it. This is a tool, it’s a fun thing to do. You’re curious, but what did you think was gonna happen? Vito: Yeah, at that point in my life, I still didn’t really know what I wanted to do. And in the later days of high school, I started looking toward the military, which is where I ended up going eventually. But I didn’t even know then that I would have a career in technology or that I wanted a career in technology. I was thinking about a lot of different career fields in the military and thought about things like the cool jobs that everybody wants to do, special operations or something like that. And I wasn’t really sure how I would make a career out of that military training or service after the military. I wasn’t at the point of even thinking about that yet. But I ended up going into the military and I actually enlisted not in a technical field at all. I enlisted in the field artillery field and I was a forward observer for field artillery for a while. And so I was in there for a couple of years and did some time in that career field and then I had a chance to reclassify. And like I said, this interest I had always had in technology sort of led me to reclassify into a tech field in the military. Manuel: And during that time, that reclassification process, is it, are they posting jobs? I’m vaguely familiar with how it works. A lot of times there’s like contract terms, right? Like your artillery for, let’s say a four year period and then you can reclassify, right? Is it something similar to that? Vito: Yeah, so a lot of it is based on contract terms. A lot of it’s also based on the needs in the military and certain career fields are higher need or they have trouble getting more people for that. Certain career fields, you have to have a certain ASVAB score, which is the test we all take to get into the military. You have to have a certain level of ASVAB score and so it’s harder to get more people into those career...