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Jon C. Haass was the founding faculty member and served as department chair of the Cyber Intelligence and Security program at the nation’s first College of Business, Security and Intelligence at ²ÝÝ®ÊÓƵ in Prescott, Arizona. He served for over two years as the interim dean, succeeding founding Dean Philip E. Jones. 

His vision for the cyber department is to build upon the success as both a NSA/DHS designated Center of Academic Excellence and ABET accredited program through outreach to improve the national and international reputation through excellence in our graduates, impactful publications and grants, expansion of offerings in its degree programs and increased partnerships with private and public organizations.

Dr. Haass was appointed by Governor Ducey to represent northern Arizona on the Arizona Cybersecurity Team. He also serves as advisory board member for the Arizona Cyber Threat Response Alliance (ACTRA), a regional information sharing and analysis organization that includes companies in 14 of the critical infrastructure sectors, including aviation. His areas of research interest include the security issues associated with connected cyber-physical systems that encompass airplanes, cars, industrial controls and more. This Internet of Things (IoT) is likely to open an even larger portion of society's systems to cyber-based attacks, requiring us to educate our students, developers and leaders on the importance of this relatively new domain using machine learning and AI methods.

Since 2017, he has promoted the concept of "The Center for the Future," an incubation, innovation and acceleration space for companies that would collaborate with the students and faculty of the campus, creating high-quality jobs in the greater Prescott region and Northern Arizona. With former Chancellor Frank Ayers, this was successfully presented in March 2019 to the Prescott City Council, and in August 2020, the Council approved allocating funds to seed the concept. In partnership with fiscal sponsor Prescott Chamber Foundation and numerous other organizations, Prescott Regional Opportunity Foundation and its Center project have operations in downtown Prescott, celebrating its fifth anniversary this July 2026.

Professional consultant and executive mentor and coach for leaders in multiple sectors including Cyber Security, Software Development, Real Estate and Internet Commerce DBA Collaborative Consulting since 2000.

Senior Executive for Business Development and Partnerships for Sendmail, Inc (acquired by Proofpoint) working with IBM, HP, INTEL, Oracle to integrate product offerings into server solutions worldwide.

VP Worldwide Marketing and Product Development for OpenTV, Inc. (acquired by Kudelski) representing set-top, server side, authoring and hardware offerings to satellite providers, cable companies and TV manufacturers.

Group Manager for multimedia products for Sun Microsystems Inc. (acquired by Oracle) in charge of video, audio, video conferencing, shared whiteboard and other mixed media software and hardware solutions.

VP Development and board member for navigation hardware and software solution company LaserPlot working with key OEM accounts including Trimble Navigation

Introduction to Cyber Security                          Co-op Cyber Intelligence and Security

Introduction to Computer Forensics                 Cyber Security Capstone

Data Mining and Machine Learning                  Cyber Security Thesis

Penetration Testing / Ethical Hacking               Open Source Research Methods and Analysis

Fundamentals of Networking                            Cyber Warfare: Threats and Counter Operations

Malware Analysis                                              Special Topics Cyber Security

Software Reverse Engineering                         Cyber Capstone Project

Advanced Network Forensics                           Cyber Intelligence and Information Security

Cyber Threat Intelligence                                  Machine Learning and Big Data Analysis

Selected Works:

ML approach to student pilot training with PSTLE, 3rd Annual AI Workshop Proceedings August 2025, Springer Advances in Computer Science Applications and Research (ACSAR Vol. 4) ISBN978-3-032-18229-6 

Cybersecurity Considerations for AI/ML Assisted Student Flight Training, AIAA 2025-3312. AIAA AVIATION FORUM AND ASCEND 2025, doi: 10.2514/6.2025-3312, eISBN978-1-62410-738-2 July 2025.

Pilot Semantics and Machine Learning. 2024 18th International Conference on Semantic Computing (ICSC), IEEE Proceedings of ICSC Conference, Laguna Hills, CA, USA 2024.

Machine learning; A personal tour, 2023 Fifth International Conference on Transdisciplinary AI (TransAI) IEEE Proceedings of TransAI Conference, Laguna Hills, CA, USA 2023, pp. 179--186 (2023)

On Cyber Protection with AI, 2023 Fifth International Conference on Transdisciplinary AI (TransAI) IEEE Proceedings of TransAI Conference, Laguna Hills, CA, USA 2023, pp. 91-94 (2023)

Cyber Threat Intelligence and Machine Learning, 2022 Fourth International Conference on Transdisciplinary AI (TransAI), Laguna Hills, CA, USA, 2022, pp. 156-159, doi: 10.1109/TransAI54797.2022.00033. (2022)

Best practices in Cybersecurity Education; Paper presented at 23rd Colloquium for Information Systems Security Education (CISSE) Las Vegas, NV (2019)

A Taxonomy Framework for Maritime Cybersecurity, International Journal on Marine Navigation and Safety of Sea Transportation, September (2018)

A Taxonomy for Aviation Cyber Security, IEEE Proceedings of NAECON 2018, Dayton, OH (2018)

Machine Learning and Intrusion Detection Systems, 5th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence, Las Vegas, NV (2018)

Educating the Cyber Security Workforce, Invited Paper presented at Cyber Security Summit, Trust in 2017: In What & Whom Do We Trust? (2017)

Cyber Security: Research Opportunities, Paper presented at 96th Annual Transportation Research Board Convention, Washington, D.C. (2017)

Aviation and Cybersecurity: Opportunities for Applied Research, TR News, Edition 304, National Academies of Science Transportation Research Board Publication (2016)

ACTRA – A case study for threat information sharing, WISCS '15 Proceedings of the 2nd ACM Workshop on Information Sharing and Collaborative Security (2015)

"Guidebook on Best Practices for Airport Cybersecurity", Airport Cooperative Research Program, Report 140. National Academy of Sciences, Washington, D. C.(2015)

Special Interactive Panel Discussion: Unmanned Aircraft Systems: Cyber Security, Proceedings of the A3IR Conference, Aviation / Aeronautics / Aerospace International Research Conference (2014)

The Cyber Threat from China, Presentation at 9^th annual GSIS Symposium: Topic China and India, (2013)