Katie Avalo

Professor Duvall

Cybersecurity Internship

02 August 2025

Cybersecurity Internship

Introduction

Cybersecurity is not an entry-level field. Gaining as much experience as possible is critical. When searching for an internship, I had a few key criteria in mind. I wanted to work for a company that was passionate about its work and efficiently provided innovative solutions to modern problems. As a student, it was important to me to work for a company that would invest in me as much as I would invest in them.

For this internship, I hoped to gain both hard and soft skills relevant to the business. So far, all of my knowledge was theoretical, not practical. The main outcome I expected from this internship was to be able to effectively implement the theoretical knowledge that I hold. Aside from that, I wanted to further understand cybersecurity in practice. Lastly, I wanted to be exposed to something I had never worked on before in class.

As a soon-to-be recent grad, the requirements for job roles start to become scary. There had ben an increased demand for individuals experienced in cloud computing. What was fear-inducing was the fact that I was not proficient in any of those things. I was grateful for the opportunity to gain exposure to something I had no skills in while I interned for Laconisoft. During my internship, I got to work hands-on with cloud infrastructure, troubleshooting, and network security in an AWS environment.

Laconisoft was formed in 2006 to provide custom services to the federal government, specializing in refactoring existing legacy applications and rescuing failing projects.  In 2014, they earned the 2014 Northrop Grumman Supplier Excellence Award for custom RADIUS server implementation and deployment into an existing large city emergency network. There are 30,000 companies evaluated for this award, and Laconisoft was one of the few to obtain the award. Multiple custom enterprise systems have been deployed and continue to run after over ten years in the federal government space.

My initial impression was that this would be an amazing place for me to learn. With a company that has achieved so much, it is evident they are passionate about their craft. As they are passionate about their craft, they would presumably want their interns to be as well. This set a positive tone for my time with the company.

Laconisoft Environment

The environment felt very secure. It was structured but not micro-managed. I was free to work through things on my own and always felt free to question as I needed. My manager was Bret Ewin, someone whom I now admire very much. As I had mentioned previously, it was important for me to be invested in by the company I worked for. I believe that he did just that.

The best example to demonstrate this will take us back to the first day. Ewin had us follow onboarding procedures through GitHub, which included SSH key generation, public key registration for Git operations, and creating/organizing a folder system. As all the instructions were made out to be for Windows, I had to use my Windows 10 virtual machine, on my MacBook. This led to so many complications, my virtual machine broke a couple times, I was not able to drag and drop the the pem file from the company USB into the virtual machine, etc. I was beginning to get frustrated and hungry for a breakthrough. I had gone home after meeting in person and told him I would continue working. At around 11 I felt like I had done everything I could have done on my own. After countless reddit forums, going through stack overflow, and even watching a couple Youtube videos, I reached out to Mr. Ewin.

He graciously helped me over the phone once texts were not enough. After countless commands, screenshots of command errors, head scratches and we were finally able to ssh into the Amazon Linux instance. It turned out to have been a couple things after the other but the final problem ended up being that the file was not a text file so the command I was putting it would go through, but it had nothing to read. In the screenshots I would send in the folders would not show the extension. He then instructed me that I needed to change my settings to show the extensions. In the cyberspace that was a huge no-no.

I did not once feel judged for making that error. By comparing the screenshot of the results I was supposed to get from the commands with the results I was getting, I was actually the one that figured out that the issue was that there was nothing to read, therefore no instructions to follow. It felt great to finally get that breakthrough. The breakthrough I would not have received without his patience and help.

Work Duties and Relevance to the Business

The first issue encountered before I even started on the job was that the company website kept redirecting me to suspicious websites. At first I thought it was the link that was sent to me, but when I Googled the website myself, I encountered the same issue. When this happens, it is important to further investigate and solve the issue as soon as possible. This indicates a comprise to web security, whether it is cross-site scripting or malware injection. These attacks allow threat actors to alter website code, leading to site redirection, which is why I was being redirected to suspicious websites.

In one instance, I was redirected to Facebok, a fake website that appeared to be the Facebook login page. This is precisely a phishing scam, which is a a form of social engineering attack that tricks people into giving out their sensitive information; in this case, trying to gain their login credentials. Once the credentials are put it, it does not log in to Facebook, it send the information to the attacker and the attacker is able to access their personal accounts. Although this was just a Facebook login, most people use the same password across multiple platforms. When the victim puts in their credentials, this can quickly escalate to larger security threats. This also puts the company at a security risk. The fact that the website has been compromised, means that the attacker could access internal data, admin credentials.

The first thing any cyber professional should learn about and ingrain in their head is the CIA triad; Confidentiality, Integrity, and Availability. The confidentiality aspect means to ensure that data is only being accessed by authorized users. The website had been injected with malicious code and accessed by someone who should not have. Integrity ensures that data has not been altered or tampered with. Availability ensures that systems and data are accessible when they are needed by authorized users. The faulty website goes against the three core principles needed for information security. As someone that needed to access this website, I was not able to.

To protect both users and the organization, the issue had to be fixed. The site had to be taken offline and scanned to remove malicious code. It had not been updated in a while and the software needed to be. For protective measures a Web Application Firewall could be enabled. As the website had not been investigated for a while, a new plan of action had to be monitoring it and performing audits to prevent it from happening again.

As a tech company it is important to maintain client trust. When a website redirects a user to a suspicious website, it is likely that they will lose confidence in abilities of the company. Especially if the user is looking to share data with Laconisoft. Fixing this problem helped the business show their commitment to cybersecurity and maintaining a secure environment for their company and their customers.

My main project was to harden an EC2 Amazon Linux instance. Doing so, one of my responsibilities was to stay up to date with vulnerabilities. In the first couple of days, there were many CVEs reported. Although that is not great for AWS, it was nice to get some experience. It was also nice to understand what I was reading. I was able to make recommendations and update configurations to further harden the instance based on the CVEs. Although the company was not using the instance yet, I was responsible for creating a hardened image that eventually would be of use. Reducing the attack surface of a machine used by the company is beneficial to both users and the organization.

Companies are moving towards cloud environments such as AWS because they provide many benefits. They are great to use because they are easily accessible by teams. By hardening this instance, I allowed other users to be able to move towards the use of cloud environments. Creating a hardened image makes the implementation of other instances even easier for future user.

How The Internship Fulfilled My Goals

One of my goals for the internship was to gain hands-on experience with cloud technologies. I was able to achieve that through my work with AWS. I had the opportunity to work directly with EC2 instances, where I launched, configured, and hardened Amazon Linux servers in accordance with the CIS Benchmark. I now have skills in creating and managing S3 buckets for secure data storage, setting permissions, and applying access policies for control visibility and access. Additionally, I was able to work with AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) to create and manage user accounts, implement the principle of least privilege, and assign roles to different users. As I had been seeing that experience with cloud makes a candidate more attractive, I was excited to add this new skill to my resume.

Another goal I had for this internship was to have the opportunity to apply the knowledge I gained in school to real-world projects to see them come to life. Things I had learned from my coursework, like networking fundamentals, system administration and configuration, and troubleshooting, were put into practice throughout my internship. For example, the knowledge I had gained of Linux command-line operations and file permissions through homework had allowed me to configure and secure EC2 environments efficiently. The lessons on networking protocols helped me troubleshoot connectivity issues between the cloud, host, and virtual machines to ensure secure communications. This real-world application reinforced my coursework, demonstrated its relevance in the field and showed me how my theoretical knowledge could be applied in the work setting, among different tools and software, and problem-solving.

This internship also helped me gain a deeper understanding of cybersecurity, as I had hoped for. I saw scenarios that highlighted how quickly and unexpectedly security incidents can occur and escalate.  As mentioned prior, I worked with a compromised website redirected users to malicious domains. This demonstrated the reality of phishing and other web-based attacks. I learned to apply security measures such as firewall configuration, IAM policy restrictions, CIS Benchmarks to reduce attack surface. The experience I had reinforced the urgency of security best practices and the importance of cyber hygiene. I was able to appreciate is it more and recognize the need for constant monitoring and quick responses to the incidents to ensure organizations have secure systems and networks.

The Most Motivating Part

What was most motivating about my internship was the opportunity to build valuable skills in cloud computing, cybersecurity, and even information technology.  Every new task, whether it was configuring an EC2 instance, setting up IAM roles, or configuring settings for security, every step presented a challenge as well as a learning opportunity. Each breakthrough gave me a great sense of accomplishment with a deeper understanding of how it all works in real-world environments. It was amazing to watch my skill set grow with every step of the way, and it was exciting to know that these tasks were directly strengthening my resume, making me a stronger candidate in the field.

My favorite part and the most rewarding part was having a mentor who was both knowledgeable and passionate about the work. They took the time to explain each concept in depth, connect them to real-world applications, but also gave me the freedom to apply the skills myself. There was a great balance between guidance and independent hands-on practice which accelerated my learning and gave me the confidence to take ownership of technical tasks. Mr. Ewin’s investment in my development made me feel supported and motivated to push myself further.

The combination of skill-building, real-world application, and supportive mentorship made the internship more of a process of personal growth. Not only for technical skills but boosting my soft skills as well. Making me more adaptable and resilient.  I now have resume-worthy accomplishments, as well as a more informed perspective path I want to take. This opportunity gave me the confidence to pursue more advanced opportunities in the cybersecurity space.

The Hardest Part

The hardest part of the internship for me was overcoming my inability to ask questions. In school, I found that when I asked teachers for help, their explanations left me even more confused than before. Due to this I am very reluctant to speak up. I felt  that asking asking questions could either waste time or make me feel like I wasn’t as smart. As a result, trying to solve problems on my own led me to very frustrated moment.

During the beginning of my internship, I carried this same mindset, which often times slowed my progress. However, I quickly realized that my mentor, Mr.Ewin was different. Not only did her answer my questions but also broke down concepts into simple steps that would build on what I already knew. He encouraged me to think through problems and would give me real-world context for technical concepts, making it clear that asking questions is a part of the learning process, not a weakness.

This shift in environment allowed me to see how much more I could learn when I actively engaged and sought clarity instead of silently struggling. Over time, I became more comfortable raising questions and discussing challenges, which not only improved my technical skills but also made me a more confident communicator. I learned that the right guidance can turn confusion into understanding—and that asking questions is a skill in itself, one that can be just as important as the technical knowledge you gain.

How To Prepare For The Internship

I believe the most important thing for the internship is to be prepared to learn a lot. It is important to understand the basics of network concepts and security concepts. Interns should be ready to ask a lot of questions and have an open mind. Interns can expect to be challenged but also to be educated on many different subjects

Conclusion

I truly believe this internship has prepared more for the field in many ways more than technical. Although I feel my school work did not prepare me enough, I feel that it prepared me with the basic important foundational knowledge needed to perform the tasks in this internship. I am happy to have completed this internship and leave with new skills such as cloud computing and with a new appreciation for cybersecurity.