Walking around inside his mother’s house in Rock Hill, South Carolina, Sam Williams ’25 uttered a sentence you don’t often hear.
“I’m excited to wake up every day thinking about hacking,” he said, “to think about cybersecurity and cyber defense.”
As a teenager, Williams developed an unquenchable thirst for cybersecurity knowledge. There were not many books on the topic for young learners like him. He grabbed every piece of material he could find to teach himself.
When the time neared to transition from high school to higher education, Williams emailed professors and cybersecurity program directors at numerous colleges and universities. “Some got back to me,” he said, “and some didn’t.”
One individual who did reply was Radford University professor and cybersecurity program director Prem Uppuluri.
“Dr. Uppuluri was very excited. He told me how we were going to build an Internet of Things lab. We were going to Brazil to pitch collaboration opportunities across borders. He mentioned Radford’s Cyber Defense Club,” Williams recalled in mid-May, 10 days after graduating from Radford. “I actually re-read that email to my family two days ago. That email shows the beginning of what is now a full journey at Radford.”
Five years later, Williams reflected on accomplishing the entire list Uppuluri made for him, and so much more.
As a junior at Radford, he received a grant from the Commonwealth Cyber Initiative (CCI) to start a business providing free cybersecurity services to local businesses.
Soon thereafter, CCI awarded the grant funds to Williams, who, in turn, created a business called Action Guard. He hired two Radford students and trained them with the cybersecurity knowledge and skills he had gained through his experiences at the university.
Then, he found two clients in the New River Valley. Williams and his team met with stakeholders from both businesses, listened to their security needs, performed penetration tests and vulnerability analysis, then wrote and shared a report with their clients.
Keep in mind, Williams was still an undergraduate student when he began running Action Guard.
“In this business, I got to see what it was like to manage people, manage their schedules and manage clients and deadlines,” said Williams, who punctuates every sentence with a smile, even when talking about hectic and stressful moments.
Williams learned about life and business throughout this time at Radford, mostly through hands-on experiences. He served as president of the Cyber Defense Club, which participates in Capture the Flag, a gamified version of cybersecurity challenges, he explained.
“There’s a lot of learning by teaching and a lot of learning by doing,” Williams said. “When you combine those, you take yourself to the next level.”
When Williams talks about Radford, he frequently refers to it as “a hands-on university,” an institution that makes it conducive for students to find their place here.
In addition to running a business as an undergrad and training fellow students in Capture the Flag events, Williams embedded himself in numerous campus ventures. He was a Research Rookie twice and received a Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship.
He took Uppuluri up on the opportunity in 2023 to be a part of a team of students and faculty who worked with researchers from Brazil to construct a framework for a collaborative relationship focused on cybersecurity and entrepreneurship. The group traveled to Brazil and Washington, D.C., before bringing the researchers back to campus.
As Williams sat among his fellow graduates at Radford’s 2025 Spring Commencement, he listened as President Bret Danilowicz called the names of a select few graduates, highlighting their accomplishments as Highlanders. He was surprised when the president mentioned his name.
“I didn’t know that was going to happen,” he said. “It felt validating. Because I’ve put in a lot of hard work. It was nice for him to say, this guy works extremely hard, and we want to take a few minutes to recognize him. That meant a lot.”
Surprised and excited, too, were Williams’s family members seated several rows behind, including two of his most ardent supporters, his mother and grandmother.
“They have been influential in my life. They always told me since I was little, ‘if you want to do something, figure it out. Go get in those rooms,’” he said with a poster of Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech in the background, along with piles of books dedicated to cybersecurity, personal growth, business, history and many others. “I’ve embodied that passion along the way.”
Williams, who in late June spoke at the Hack Red Con 2025 cybersecurity conference in Louisville, Kentucky, is still running Action Guard and hoping to expand its client base, with Radford students helping. He’s also working to spread his passion in hopes of reaching groups of kids just like him who yearn to learn more about cybersecurity. He and his mother, a writer by profession, have crafted a book titled “Cyber Club: Phishing for the Truth,” which is set for publication in October, during Cybersecurity Awareness Month. The book is intended for middle and high school students.
“It’s about five middle school hackers who get into a little bit more trouble than they’d like,” Williams explained. “The idea of the book is to teach kids real-life cybersecurity issues through a fictional book.”
His mother wrote the book, and Williams provided the expertise. “Our joke is: I’m the cyber and she’s the book,” he said, laughing.
It’s the book Williams yearned for as a kid on those days in South Carolina when he woke up dreaming about hacking and cyber defense.
“I think back now and wonder,” he said, “man, what if I had a book like ‘Cyber Club when I was a kid?’”
The book will not be a one-and-done venture. He and his mother plan to publish numerous other books. “As the cybersecurity landscape evolves every single day, there are infinite plots we could write about,” Williams said. “For as long as cybersecurity exists, ‘Cyber Club’ will exist!”