Skills
Python Programming
I wrote a Python program in my internship at General Engineering to signal the shop floor buzzers to notify the employees when it was time to start the shift, break times, lunch time, and the end of the shift.
import time
import threading
from datetime import datetime, timedelta
from gpiozero import Buzzer
from time import sleep
buzzer = Buzzer (18)
now = datetime.now ()
dt = now.strftime(“%m/%d/%Y %H:%M:%S”)
class Alarm:
def __init__(self, alarm_time: str, message: str):
self.alarm_time = alarm_time
self.message = message
def set_alarm(self):
alarm_hour, alarm_minute = map(int, self.alarm_time.split(‘:’))
now = datetime.now()
alarm_datetime = now.replace(hour=alarm_hour, minute=alarm_minute, second=0,
microsecond=0)
if alarm_datetime < now:
alarm_datetime += timedelta(days=1)
wait_time = (alarm_datetime – now).total_seconds()
time.sleep(wait_time)
buzzer.on()
sleep(.5) #when placed on the floor set to (10)
buzzer.off()
class AlarmClock:
def __init__(self):
self.alarms = []
def add_alarm(self, alarm_time: str, message: str):
new_alarm = Alarm(alarm_time, message)
self.alarms.append(new_alarm)
def start_alarms(self):
for alarm in self.alarms:
alarm_thread = threading.Thread(target=alarm.set_alarm)
alarm_thread.start()
if __name__ == “__main__”:
my_alarm_clock = AlarmClock()
# 15 separate alarms with different times and messages
my_alarm_clock.add_alarm(“7:00”, “1st shift clock in”)
my_alarm_clock.add_alarm(“9:30”, “Break Time”)
my_alarm_clock.add_alarm(“9:43”, “Three minutes until End Break”)
my_alarm_clock.add_alarm(“9:45”, “End Break”)
my_alarm_clock.add_alarm(“12:00”, “Start Lunch”)
my_alarm_clock.add_alarm(“12:27”, “Three minutes until End Lunch”)
my_alarm_clock.add_alarm(“12:30”, “End Lunch”)
my_alarm_clock.add_alarm(“15:27”, “Three minute warning”)
my_alarm_clock.add_alarm(“15:30”, “End 1st Shift, Start 2nd Shift”)
my_alarm_clock.add_alarm(“18:30”, “Break Time”)
my_alarm_clock.add_alarm(“18:45”, “Break Time”)
my_alarm_clock.add_alarm(“21:30”, “Start Lunch”)
my_alarm_clock.add_alarm(“21:57”, “Three minutes until End Lunch”)
my_alarm_clock.add_alarm(“22:00”, “End Lunch”)
my_alarm_clock.add_alarm(“2:00”, “End 2nd Shift”)
my_alarm_clock.start_alarms()
Research Skills
When I was looking back on the last ten years at all the cybersecurity breaches, I keep looking at the Microsoft incident in January 2021. “One of the largest cyber-attacks in US history, over 30,000 US businesses were affected by a sweeping attack on the Microsoft Exchange email servers, one of the largest email servers in the world” (Chin, K. 2024). “A sweeping attack is a network scanning technique used to determine which of a range of IP addresses map to live hosts.” (Hanna, K. T 2021). “The hackers were able to exploit four zero-day vulnerabilities that allowed them to gain unauthorized access to emails from small businesses to local governments” (Chin, K. 2024). Zero-day vulnerabilities are a hole in an operating system that the developer is unaware of.
“For three months, hackers took advantage of a few coding errors to allow them to take control of vulnerable systems. They only needed two conditions to break into each individual company’s email servers. One being connection to the internet, and secondly on premises locally managed systems” (Chin, K. 2024). After they gained access, they requested access to data and took over servers. Microsoft recommended five actions to mitigate the consequences and prevent a future incident. “Apply a hot patch to security devices to automatically block exploration attempts using signatures from the threat actors exploit while you work to upgrade and patch the devices. Conduct an asset inventory to identify all affected Microsoft Exchange servers deployed in the organization. Run version checks to see if they have been patched. Apply appropriate patches where possible, if a patch isn’t possible you should secure behind a security device to detect and prevent an exploit. Finally, they recommended to apply advanced scanning leveraging known indicators of compromise to detect leave behinds and anomalous behaviors resulting from a successful breach” (Solutions, A. C.2021).
“In July 2021, the Biden administration, along with the FBI accused China of the data breach. Then Microsoft followed suit and named a Chinese state-sponsored hacker group called Hafnium as the culprit behind the attack” (Chin, K. 2024).
References
Chin, K. (2024). Biggest data breaches in US history (updated 2024): Upguard. RSS.
https://www.upguard.com/blog/biggest-data-breaches-us
Hanna, K. T. (2021, June 18). What is a ping sweep (ICMP sweep)?. Networking.
https://www.techtarget.com/searchnetworking/definition/ping-sweep-ICMP-sweep
Solutions, A. C. (2021, December 23). Best of 2021 – what we can learn from the 2021 Microsoft
Data breach. Security Boulevard. https://securityboulevard.com/2021/12/what-we-can-
learn-from-the-2021-microsoft-data-breach/
Troubleshooting Skills
From my internship paper. On 1/23/25 there was a PC on the shop floor that was not able to open any applications such as google chrome. This problem would not let our employee clock into work on this PC. To begin troubleshooting I opened the task manager to check the CPU and memory of the PC. After further investigation I removed the PC from the domain and reinstalled windows. After successfully removing the PC, reinstalling windows and adding it back to the domain through a local admin, the PC began to operate effectively.
Narrative Essay
For my major I chose to pursue the cybersecurity tract because I wanted to help people be able to surf the web with out having to worry about hackers. Throughout this essay I will start at the beginning of what led me to where we are now as well as where I am hoping to be after graduation
My journey to where I am now, we must go back in time ten years ago when I was a community college drop out of half a semester into my freshman year. I was working at Sam’s Club wondering where my life was going until I got the courage to do what I have always wanted to do. So, without talking to anyone after my shift at Sam’s Club I walked straight into the recruiting office of the United States Marine Corps and began my Enlistment process. To say this was a shock to my family when I told them I
have to be in Beckley West Virginia in two weeks for my initial physical then filling them in with all the details is an understatement. Needless to say, this was the most rash decision I have ever made, but with that being said it was easily the best thing I could have done for myself. The Marine Corps gave me the confidence I needed to accomplish any task that was in front of me to the best of my ability. During my time in the Marine Corps, I excelled earning a Meritorious promotion to Corporal within two years of being in setting me up for earing the rank of Sergeant on the exact same day I of my EAS date (End of Active Service). After getting out of the Marine Corps I struggled hard trying to figure out what to do with my life then after three years I decided to use my Post 911 Gi Bill to enroll in school. When deciding my major, with the help of my wife I narrowed them down to my top two and started deep diving to decide which path I wanted to follow. These two majors I was comparing were cybersecurity, and wildlife management. The wildlife management major stuck out to me because my childhood consisted of mostly hunting and fishing. While these two majors are vastly different paths these two stuck out to me because with cybersecurity, I would be able to help people not be afraid of the internet because of hackers trying to steal your information. This was the largest reason secondly there was a zero percent unemployment rate when I started school. This stuck out to me because before I started school, I was getting laid off work when work got slow, and I never wanted to deal with that ever again.
Throughout my college career I leaned on my drive and confidence that I gained from the Marine Corps and never slowed down through the summer semesters leading me to this moment graduating in three years. I started my second attempt at Virginia Highlands Community College where I had dropped out of after graduating high school. After three semesters I began following my dad’s footsteps at Old Dominion University. My time at Old Dominion has been amazing and my professors have helped me the entire time leading to me graduating with a 3.45 GPA overall. Throughout my college career I enjoyed learning more about the cybersecurity and IT world that I had zero experience with before. The first step was my intro to cybersecurity class where we learned an overview of what cybersecurity is as well as the different career paths are in the field along with my into to Python programming class. Another class that showed me I made the right choice was the Cyber Techniques and Operation class, this class showed me that I made the right choice with my major and made me want to become a penetration tester later on in my career after I gain some more experience.
While going to school I was working at General Engineering where I worked my way up to being able to being able to an IT intern position. For this position, the intro to Python programming class helped me with my internship at General Engineering along with the networking class. The first task I tasked with was to write a Python program on a Raspberry Pi to connect to the shop floor buzzers alerting the employees when the start time, break, lunch, and the shift change times were. Without the intro to Python programming class I would have had no idea where to start. This class gave me a solid foundation to build my current knowledge of how to write my first large program. While the networking, Linux, and Windows classes helped me with the other tasks in the internship. Without the networking and windows classes I would not have gained the troubleshooting skills I have today. Another aspect college helped me explain in lay persons terms what was actually going on with the employee’s computers to educate fellow employees on why the issue occurred. I believe this is a critical step that is very important to be a good IT professional for the simple fact if your employees can understand what the issue is they can either explain what the problem is better in the future or fix the problem themselves. Which will improve efficiency as well as security in the workplace. When it comes to security one of the largest vulnerabilities are the employees themselves. This is why it is important to teach your fellow employees what to lookout for in the future as well as notify you if they see something to notify the IT department first to prevent a data leak.
For the future after graduating at Old Dominion I plan to obtain a fulltime cybersecurity position to gain hands on experience in the field. Then after gaining more experience apply to obtain my master’s degree in the field. Cybersecurity has grown more dear to my heart and I have become more passionate for the field with every class I have taken along the path of obtaining my degree. Which is what I have been searching for since I have reached my EAS date from the United States Marine Corps. I believe this is important because to be genuinely happy in life you must enjoy what you do every day for work. Even through the bad days which are destined to happen with any career. This stuck out to me in the reading of The Psychology of life Stories “The idea that one’s life as complex and dynamic as it increasingly appears to be, might be integrated into a meaning and purposeful whole” (McAdams, D. P. 2001). Without having a career that makes your life whole you will constantly feel empty like unfortunately most everyone will have had to deal with this at some point in their life like I had. I am grateful that I have finally found a career path where I will not have to worry about feeling that way again
Finally, I believe my time at Old Dominion University along with my time in the United States Marine Corps has prepared me for my future career along with the future path of obtaining my master’s degree. Without the knowledge of my professors and the IT department of General Engineering allowing me to conduct my internship with them. I would not have been able to graduate in three years like I have been able to.
Reflection Essay
My time at Old Dominion University has prepared me for my future career tremendously because when I started into the school of cybersecurity I had no experience in this field, and now I successfully completed an IT internship. While updating my eportfolio I am proud of myself looking back on how far I have come though this process. My favorite subjects in cybersecurity are Ethical Hacking, Networking, Networking security, and Python programming.
The foundation of my security mindset goes back to my time in the United States Marine Corps. Being apart of the combat arms side security is everything. The same goes for everyone who is on the internet. Whether we know it or not all of our information is somewhere on the internet and it takes all of us to prevent data leaks to hurt us more. The most important thing to know is when you are at work you cannot rely solely on the cybersecurity team to protect you simply because the employees of a business are the largest vulnerability there is. That is why it is important to notify your IT department if you see anything out of the ordinary or if you accidently clicked something you shouldn’t have.
After going back through all of my past work in the cybersecurity program it shows how much you rely on interdisciplinary studies for cybersecurity. The part I personally like is how you have to use psychology to think like a hacker to protect yourself from a hacker. The most eye opening part of school has been when I conducted my research papers on past attacks such as Notpetya, BadRabbit, and Stuxnet. These research papers shown me how important this career is to protect not just the businesses but to protect the employees and their families as well.
As shown in the skills section the three best skills I have learned at Old Dominion and my internship are Python programming, Research skills, and troubleshooting. When I started the Python programming class I had some scheduling errors so I had to start it late and rush to catch up. This being my first programming class it was a lot to take in at first, but after learning the basics as well as what a modulus is I began to thoroughly enjoy programming because of the challenge it is. Research skills are very important as well for the IT field simply because you run into a problem you have not seen before you have to have the skills to find the answer from quality sources rather than take the first answer you see. Then there is troubleshooting skills my largest take away from this requires you to be soft spoken and have a teaching mind so you can educate a fellow employee, or clients computer you are fixing as well.
Finally I am proud of myself for all of the skills I have added to my toolbox through my time at Old Dominion University without all of the classes I have taken there would have been no way I would be ready to start my career.