Cybersecurity Internship

This course enables students to volunteer at an agency related to cybersecurity. Students must volunteer for 50 hours per course credit and complete course assignments.

Course Material

Internship Reflection

Internship Journals

Applying Course Knowledge

• What have you learned in coursework that relates to the world of work?
  • I have related theoretical concepts, such as network layout, to the practical experience of understanding a network layout
  • I have leveraged my Linux knowledge and applied management techniques to it.
  • I have used my planning and diagram abilities to better serve myself and my department going forward.
• How are the concepts you have read about in course texts applied in practice?
  • The biggest thing I have learned is that each IT department implements practices differently. No one answer fits all situations and policies. In the world of education, for example, security can take a back seat to accessibility. Scientific equipment doesn’t get updated on the same time scale as technology, and upgrading can be very cost-prohibitive.
• What theories, ideas, or concepts might be applied in your career area?
  • For now, I think the idea of reactive security will be very relevant going forward. There are so many new security threats, and technology evolves so rapidly that security will always have to react to new situations and try to be proactive wherever possible.

Skill Development

• What new skills did you learn during the internship?
  • The biggest skill was learning how to utilize a SIEM effectively. This involved setting up mailbox rules to filter the investigations/ assignments relevant to me, reading through and parsing log data, investigating file processes and hashes, investigating access & IP addresses, investigating authentication information, and end-user communication

Personal Development

• How did you benefit personally from the internship experience?
  • I think the biggest benefit for me was the ability to work with other departments. Each department had its way of working together and troubleshooting. Each was approachable in its way, and I was able to learn about the infrastructure of the University and its security posturing. Since I was self-managed, the hardest challenge was balancing my workload and the internship workload. I ended up prioritizing my work getting done first, so I could have more time to work on internship duties. I think this approach served each department fairly well and allowed me to gain the experiences I was seeking. I also think working with the departments lent me a new level of interdepartmental communication and collaboration that will serve me well going forward.