From Cyber Defense to Clinical Skills: An Ethical Hacker Joins USU's Class of 2030

Army 2nd Lt. Nathaniel Williams brings an ethical hacker's mindset to military medicine and the Class of 2030.

Army 2nd Lt. Nathaniel Williams, a certified ethical hacker, joins the Uniformed Services University School of Medicine Class of 2030 with a background in network communications and cybersecurity. (Photo Credit: Tom Balfour, USU; Graphic Credit: Sofia Echelmeyer, USU.)

September 8, 2026 by Melissa Reichley

Army 2nd Lt. Nathaniel Williams is a certified ethical hacker and a first-year medical student in the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences (USU) School of Medicine Class of 2030. An Army Reserve officer, he earned his ethical-hacking certification months before starting medical school, and he believes the mindset that hunts for weaknesses in a computer network belongs in medicine, too.

His background in network communications and cybersecurity has given him a perspective he expects to matter more as medicine leans harder on digital systems, artificial intelligence, and patient data.

Medicine and the military were part of Williams' life early. The son of a surgeon and a nurse, he still counts the day he wore his father's oversized scrubs to elementary school for career day among the happiest of his childhood.

Think Like the Threat

Williams' interest in cybersecurity grew during a deployment to Jordan, where he worked as an IT administrator on what is now the Department of War (DoW) network. The work pulled him toward the puzzle of finding weaknesses in complex networks. As part of the cybersecurity response team, he stepped in when someone connected a non-encrypted computer to an encrypted network, or the reverse. "I would say, 'Sir, give me your computer right now,' and then go wipe the computer because they had a data breach. I thought that was fun and I looked into hacking."

Ethical hacking, he says, is a defensive strategy: to protect a system, you have to understand how the people trying to break in would think and operate. "The best way to truly secure against threats is to be able to think like those types of threats, act like those types of threats, use the tools they would use, and use the tactics and techniques they would use—and then patch those holes once you find them."

He has put that approach to work professionally and through "bug bounties," testing small businesses' systems and reporting the weaknesses he finds so the businesses can shore up their networks without the cost of hiring a private security firm.

Army 2nd Lt. Nathaniel Williams, left, during a 2025 National Training Center rotation. Williams served as a network communication specialist before beginning medical school. (Courtesy Photo)

Where Cybersecurity Meets Patient Care

Modern health care depends on complex digital infrastructure. Hospitals use systems such as DICOM, or Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine, to transmit, store, and retrieve patient information. Those systems can create tension between security and convenience, especially when security measures interrupt a clinician's workflow.

Williams sees an opening for physicians who understand technology to help close that gap. Consider something as ordinary as an unlocked computer left displaying patient health information. Williams points to a fix built by the IT team at his alma mater, Liberty University: a small Bluetooth device on a user's keychain that senses how close the user is to the machine and locks the screen automatically when the user walks away.

That kind of solution, for Williams, is what technology should do in medicine — strengthen security without slowing the people who rely on it. Patient security depends on data security.

That balance grows harder as artificial intelligence works its way deeper into health care.

The AI Question

Williams sees the growing use of AI in patient care as one of the most important cybersecurity challenges facing medical institutions. "AI has its place," he says, but the data that trains and improves those systems has to come from somewhere.

As developers push for more data, he argues, medicine has to keep its focus on the information patients entrust to it. "There's pressure to find data if AI developers want to keep making money. But we have to be responsible in protecting our patients' data."

For Williams, the real question is how to use technology in medicine responsibly. That conviction is why he works to keep his computer science skills sharp even as he learns medicine. "I'm trying very hard while I'm a medical student to maintain my understanding of computer science and try to find the places that it integrates with medicine so I don't have to give up on those hobbies," he says.

The Human Side of Technology

For all his fluency with computers, Williams is clear about what matters most. "I truly believe that human beings are more valuable than computers. I'd rather work on and with them directly."

That conviction also shapes his medical goals. Williams hopes to become a plastic surgeon like his father, who specializes in microsurgery and peripheral nerve reconstruction, and he pictures using that work to help injured veterans through procedures like rewiring nerves to control prosthetics.

His path to medicine started with technology, and he plans to keep the two braided together rather than choose between them. "I welcome anyone else who wants to nerd out with me."