This was such an interesting experience that has carried on with me through the years. My freshman I participated in this program and decided to research Blockchain and where it can be used within: Malware Detection, Voting Polls, and Healthcare. This was very beginner level research and not fully fleshed out, but while at COVA CCI Conference in the fall Dr. Payne heard about it and wanted it for the Board of Visitors Presentation. So from there I revived the research and with new knowledge and skills under my belt and made some real research.

Cyber Innovate was a Design-Thinking Challenged heaed by Dr. Sanzo, this was an amazing challenge where our team studied Cyber-Hygiene for students K-8. We developed a game called CyberGarden which would take you through learning modules in order to learn more about Cyber Hygiene. As students go through the modules they grow their garden. As you progress you get rare plants and new scenery for your garden, which entices students to continue to learn and grow their cyber knowledge.

Currently developing a home lab for networking and I already have one for pentesting. In this HomeLab I plan to connect a managed switch, HP ProDesk, router, and an older laptop all to it’s own small area network. With this project I have installed Proxmox on the HP ProDesk and plan to run it as a server, every other night I work on new configurations for this SOHO and cannot wait for it to be fully functional. Once fully functional I will attempt to run different atacks and also add a firewall to it and manage that as well. All of this will sharpen my IT skills and my cyber ones as well. On my own computer I already have windows 7,10,NT, & XP that are all connected to each other that I run my own attacks on and try out different things with.

Since attending ODU I’ve been able to go to several different conferences in and outside of ODU. I’ve attend COVA CCI, Cyber Fusion, ODU CyberOps, Cyber Forge, Boeing Day, and plenty of other conferences that have given me new insight on cybersecurity and amazing networking experiences. What I’ve learned from these conferences is new trends in cybersecurity, what new things I should work on as well. I love going to these conferences and I am very excited to head to RSA Conference soon in May!

I have also been fortunate enough to have been apart of a few CTFS. Prelude, Concord Dawn, and CyberOps. I have also done alot of CTF practice with: banditoverthewire, PicoCTF, Tryhackme, and other platforms that sharpen your skills. My favorite CTF was ConcordDawn. This CTF was put on by AFRL and it was a Situation-Based CTF that was amazing. You were required to get the IP address of a High Value Target(HVT) then send drones to their coordinates. While doing this you had to drop his cell communications and disable an attackers drone as well. This CTF was 2 days long and it was very in depth and I have never seen a CTF like it. Here is some of what was required for the CTF