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