As the days grow shorter and we start pulling out our warmest sweaters, it’s the perfect time to turn our focus inward and sharpen our technical skills. Before the frantic holiday season truly kicks in, let’s gather for a session that brings practical, powerful light to the often-dark and complex world of Large Language Models (LLMs) and security.

The lack of sunshine shouldn’t mean a lack of new knowledge! This Thursday, November 13th, Aaron McPhall will be illuminating how we can move past simple chatbot interfaces and start implementing powerful, secure AI agents directly into our workflows.

Feature Talk: Agent-Augmented SecOps: Building Your Private LLM Coding Workbench

The rise of large language models (LLMs) is fundamentally changing the software development and security operations (SecOps) lifecycle.

This session moves beyond basic chatbot coding to explore agentic coding: integrating powerful AI models directly into the IDE to automate complex workflows while maintaining data security.

Why Go Private? Secure AI, Lower Cost

We will focus specifically on utilizing local, open-weight LLMs (like Qwen3 Coder) as cost-effective and private alternatives to expensive cloud services, ensuring sensitive data remains on-premise. Attendees will learn how to build a practical development stack.

Key components that will be covered include:

• Inference Providers: Selecting an appropriate inference provider (ollama, llama.cpp).
• Model Mechanics: Understanding the trade-offs in model quantization and context length.
• Hardware Planning: Calculating the necessary hardware and VRAM to run agents efficiently.
• Live Orchestration: Through live demonstrations using IDE extensions like RooCode, the presenter will show how to orchestrate complex security tasks such as certificate lifecycle review and structured analysis of helpdesk tickets to unlock the true potential of AI agents in a developer or analyst’s workflow.

If you’ve been looking for a way to leverage AI agents without sacrificing data privacy or blowing your budget, this is a must-attend session. Don’t let the technical complexity of local LLMs keep you in the dark, come learn how to build your own secured workbench.

Meeting Details:

We will be meeting at Virginia Western Community College in the Hall Family Business/Science Building. Take the stairs to the left and go to the third floor and go to the CyberSecurity lab in room M302.

Meeting info:
Virginia Western Community College
Business/Science Building, Room M302
November 13th, 2025 @ 6PM
https://maps.app.goo.gl/ToJyoaMJ5BUy417QA

Looking forward to seeing you there!