CYSE 368

Cyber Internship

Prof. Duvall

Fall 2024

Edwin C Wells IV

                During the fall semester of 2024 I had the privilege of attending Old Dominion University COVA CCI Cyber Internship. This internship was partnered with Valor Cybersecurity to deliver security as a service for local businesses who might not have cyber security implementations in place or even in their minds. I was able to participate in this program by consulting and recommending actionable tasks to the City of Suffolk.

                Working with the City of Suffolk was a valuable experience both professionally and personally. Professionally speaking, I was able to gain firsthand experience with a standard industry tool, Tenable, and real-world servers that service the public. I was the team leader for one of two teams serving the City of Suffolk. This role meant I had increased responsibilities to not only work on the project but manage all aspects of it as well giving me valuable experience in the role of leadership.

                Personally, I have gained confidence in my skills, leadership, and teamwork abilities. This internship was a great opportunity to develop this confidence in multiple ways. First, actually applying skills learned in class to real-world situations with serious impacts developed my sense of judgement and solidified my confidence in performing risk assessments. My confidence as a leader was also solidified during this process as well. I believe my many years of experience teaching and interpersonal skills I already had as a martial arts instructor and Physical Therapist Assistant formed the foundation of my leadership role during this time. I was able to foster an environment where everyone can participate, generate, and grow without a feeling of confinement. After seeing how our end deliverable was received not only by the City of Suffolk but also by the whole class and visiting guests really struck home with me that I was able to guide this project to a highly praised end. This also could only have happened because the two teams were able to work so well with each other. That could only have happened because of the communication network the team leads had in place and how I was able to guide the project to a singular and clear end point. The first thing I said to my team after becoming the team leader was, “We are going to treat this and make this a professional project and not just another classwork assignment.” And I believe that carried through the whole course and even guided the other team because I did not want to give the City of Suffolk two presentations and make the project feel disconnected.

                This internship was also able to fulfill most of the items in my Memorandum of Agreement signed at the beginning of the semester. The listed items were Network Building, Increase Communication Skills, Risk Management Assessment, Project Development and Management, and Customer Consultation and Education.

                I have most certainly built up my network within the cyber industry during this semester internship. I have connected with other students on Linkedin to follow and share future growth opportunities. I have also connected with experienced professionals who have volunteered their references for future jobs. We were also able to meet several high ranked individuals within various companies to communicate with.

                For communication skills I would say they were more solidified as opposed to growth during this time. This is because I did not have to find ways to communicate with team members or clients but rather practically used what I already had. Thus, this internship still benefitted me through maturation of skill versus development.

                Risk Management Assessment was completed during the time of this class. This internship gave valuable experience with technical and executive opportunity to perform risk management of live systems. This was important to me because I really wanted to have a technical opportunity to perform because it was something I had never done before having gone through a career change.

                Project Development and Management was also completed during the internship as well. I would have been satisfied with this part as well not having been the team leader because we really did develop a template and framework for what the City of Suffolk wanted in their assessment and report. As the team leader though I really had the opportunity to perform this from a leadership perspective. I found myself, in the end, confident that I could do this type of task again and at the same in not higher level of quality.

                Customer Consultation and Education was halfway fulfilled during this internship. Not knowing who I would be working with at the time of writing and signing the memorandum of agreement I wrote this item to cover most any customer I would have been assigned to. Me and my team consulted and educated the City of Suffolk, but the education level and depth was completely different than for the other small businesses. I did not have to apply the Valor Top 10 checklist and I did not have to educate on typical best practices. I did have to educate on some technical issues but overall, it was more informative than educational because we were already working with information technology professionals.

                The most exciting aspect of this internship was to actually get my hands on and perform a risk assessment of a functional live server. This was the entire goal of doing this internship for myself, to get hands-on practice and confidence. The most challenging aspect of the internship was the initial pacing at the beginning of the semester and waiting to work with the city.

                Future interns need to have well developed communication, time management, and interview skills. I know from working with my team members they did not have any experience of interviewing people and thus I took some of the class activities to help develop this for them. I would also recommend that interns know how to use some common cyber tools and can research technical issues.

                Overall, this was an amazing opportunity to develop several skills in a very short time. I will take this experience and keep moving forward with everything I have learned into my future jobs wherever that may be. I know this course is still young, but I believe as more time goes on it will continue to get refined and clearer in its mission and goals.