Olivia Davis serves as the Information Security (InfoSec) Cybersecurity Awareness Coordinator at UCSB where she reports to Roger Padilla and UCSB’s Chief Information Security Officer, Jackson Muhirwe. Olivia focuses on educating students, staff, and faculty about cybersecurity risks, best practices, and emerging threats.
Olivia began her role in April 2023, during the spring of her freshman year. “I wasn’t necessarily looking for a job in security,” she explains. “I just wanted something that was technical but also creative.” After initially applying to UCSB’s IT internship program, Olivia was encouraged by program leadership to interview for the cybersecurity awareness position, an opportunity she’s grateful to have had throughout her time at UCSB.
A large part of Olivia’s work is planning and executing Cybersecurity Awareness Month, held every October. During this month-long initiative, she helps organize a systemwide UC webinar series, develops themed weekly content, and produces videos, social media campaigns, and written articles designed to make cybersecurity topics accessible and relevant. Recent campaigns have emphasized data privacy, the legal dimensions of data use, and the rapidly evolving role of artificial intelligence in security.
Beyond campaigns, Olivia also contributes to the university’s day-to-day security education and communication. Earlier this year, for example, she supported campus-wide messaging around a tuition-related scam, helping students recognize and avoid fraudulent communications and losing potentially thousands of dollars in financial aid.
Collaboration is another key aspect of Olivia’s work. She regularly partners with student organizations, campus housing, and student media outlets like The Daily Nexus to extend the reach of cybersecurity education. She has worked with resident advisors and housing-focused student groups on scam awareness, collaborated with UCSB IT interns, and participated in campus tabling events to promote both cybersecurity practices and IT internship opportunities.
When asked about the most significant emerging risk in cybersecurity, Olivia points to education gaps, particularly among students. While faculty and staff receive structured security training, students are often targeted by scams without having the same training. Fake internships, housing scams, and fraudulent research opportunities are common, she notes, and many are preventable with earlier education. Olivia advocates for more formalized student-focused training, ideally at onboarding or the start of the academic year, to help students recognize warning signs before becoming victims.
Outside of work, Olivia enjoys reading, her favorite genre is dystopian fiction, with Station Eleven ranking as her favorite, and spending time with friends. One of her most distinctive hobbies is attending estate sales, which she describes as immersive. Growing up in Minnesota, she spent weekends yard sale shopping with her mother, an experience that sparked a lifelong love of finding unique, secondhand items and appreciating the stories behind them. Reflecting on her experience, Olivia expresses gratitude for the opportunity to grow alongside the UCSB Information Security team. What began as a part-time job became a formative experience, one that strengthened her technical awareness, sharpened her communication skills, and shaped how she thinks about privacy, security, and ethics.
After graduating this December, Olivia will be heading to Reno to work at Ridgeline, an Investment Portfolio Management Software company, where she will continue to practice and apply the technical and security skills she has learned during her time at UCSB.