Guest Segment (Part 2) - LSU CISO Sumit Jain on Security Tools, Phishing's Persistent Threat, AI-Powered Threat Detection, and the Real Risk of LLM’s on Campus

Interview Highlights:

• A Layered Toolset: LSU runs dual EDR platforms (Microsoft Defender and CrowdStrike), Splunk as its SIEM for log management, and Splunk SOAR (via partner TekStream) to coordinate incident response across the statewide SOC program.

• Phishing Remains Enemy #1: Across higher ed generally, phishing is the top entry point for attackers; Jain recalled a pre-MFA, pre-COVID incident where compromised accounts cascaded across multiple universities, forcing account suspensions every five minutes.

• AI on the Email Front Line: LSU uses AI specifically to catch executive impersonation—fake emails posing as the chancellor or vendors like Dell requesting changed payment routing numbers—flagging them for review before delivery. On the SOC side, AI builds context around alerts (device mismatches, unusual IP patterns) that a human analyst then validates before escalating—keeping a human in the loop rather than fully automating decisions.

• Fighting AI With AI—Proactively: LSU deploys honeypots, like a dummy Moodle instance, to lure AI-driven attackers, capture their IPs and techniques, then feed that threat intelligence into production systems to auto-block similar attacks before they happen.

• The Real AI Risk Is Data, Not the Tool: Jain’s biggest concern with staff using ChatGPT, Copilot, or Claude isn’t the AI itself—it’s uploading sensitive student, HR, or research data to platforms that may train on it. Louisiana state law bars public institutions from using Chinese-linked LLMs; Jain flagged that individual (non-Enterprise) Cursor licenses can violate this because some underlying models have Chinese ties.

• Building Homegrown AI Tools: LSU faculty built ”MikeGPT,” an internal GPT-based tool on Azure, letting departments create custom agents—like one that lets students query a syllabus directly or an in-progress agent that answers questions from an 80-90 page data governance policy. Both hosts agreed that narrow, tailored AI tools solving specific institutional pain points—rather than general chatbot use—represent the most valuable and lowest-risk way to bring AI into daily operations.