The Center for Information Assurance, housed in Louisiana Tech’s College of Business, launched The Cyber Ways podcast this week. Hosted by Dr. Craig Van Slyke and Dr. Tom Stafford, renowned computer information systems faculty members, the podcast aims to translate academic cyber security research into practical and real-world application.

“Throughout my time as a professor, there has been a disconnect between what we, as academics, study and what the industry needs,” said Van Slyke, Louisiana Tech’s McCallister Eminent Scholar in Information Systems.

“There’s a need for a medium that can distill academic security research into a form that’s useful for security professionals. We do that through our teaching, but this is an opportunity for us to also help other academics get their ideas out into the practitioner marketplace.”

New episodes will be available on a weekly basis and will feature top academic researchers to talk about how their research can be put into practice by cyber security professionals. Each episode will discuss the practical implications of one published, peer-reviewed article.

In the first episode, Stafford and Van Slyke interview Dr. Merrill Warkentin of Mississippi State University to discuss his research on how cybersecurity behaviors can be contagious — a theory that Van Slyke notes is “a fresh perspective and one that can be really helpful to security practitioners.”

“We want our fellow academics — people who are engaged in scientific inquiry into the nature of security — to understand the important and vital link to the community of practice in business,” said Stafford, who serves as the John Ed Barnes Endowed Eminent Scholar in Data Analytics. “We are bringing together researchers and practitioners to seek solutions to problems that are relevant on a day-to-day, bottom-line basis.”

Stafford and Van Slyke are both leaders in the field of information systems research. Stafford serves as editor-in-chief of The DATA BASE for Advances in Information Systems, the longest continually-published MIS journal, and has previously edited 13 special issues of notable journals including Communications of the ACM, IEEE Transactions, and MIS Quarterly. He co-chaired the 2018 Americas Conference for Information Systems and chaired 2019 Dewald Roode Workshop on Information Systems Security Research. He has been selected to serve as the chair for the 2025 International Conference for Information Systems, one of the most notable yearly research meetings in the field of business technology.

Van Slyke, former dean of the W.A. Franke College of Business at Northern Arizona University, has published over 40 articles in respected academic journals including Decision Sciences, Communications of the ACM, European Journal of Information Systems, and Journal of the Association for Information Systems. His fourth co-authored textbook, “Information Systems in Business: An Experiential Approach,” is in its fourth edition, and his first trade book, “On Leadership and Life: Essays on Leading and Living Well,” was published in 2017.

The Cyber Ways podcast is produced by the Center for Information Assurance and College of Business, and is funded through the College’s Just Business giving society, a group of alumni and friends who pool financial resources then jointly decide how the funds will be invested. 

Certified by the National Security Agency and the Department of Homeland Security as a Center of Academic Excellence in Cyber Defense Research and Education, the Center for Information Assurance’s mission is to foster, support, and conduct innovative education, training, and research in information assurance, cyber security, and cyber defense of computer information systems across all types of industries for the state of Louisiana and the Southeastern United States.

To download episodes of The Cyber Ways, visit business.latech.edu/cyberways or your favorite streaming app.