Cybersecurity Internship
This course allows students to volunteer to work in an agency related to cybersecurity. Students must volunteer for 50 hours per course credit and complete course assignments.
Course Material
The reflective journals I submitted below have completed after each 50 hour period of work. In them I demonstrate meaningful reflection concerning my learning objectives, problems, challenges, and document observations regarding my internship.
Beginning my Internship at ODU
I am interning in the Old Dominion University Computer Science department. The specific group I work for is called Systems Group, it is made up mostly of students who are either computer science or cybersecurity majors and we are separated into three categories of employees call Consultants, Runas, and Full Times. The Systems Group has been around for a long time, but there isn’t much info published as to its origin and back story. The Systems Group products include solving challenging problems, actively develop and implement new projects for faculty, staff, and students, create accounts, reset passwords, assist with CS technology services, receive reports of technical problems, provide remote access to resources, and maintain computing labs.
Duties, Assignments, and Projects
The two primary tasks of the day are to address outstanding tickets when we first come in, the ones we can do we do and those we can’t we seek someone who can assist or will take the task on alone while we move onto another ticket. Once the tickets are reconciled, we move into whatever the task is for the day.
Specific Use of Skills or Knowledge of Cybersecurity
The skills required and that I am gaining as a Consultant in Systems Group includes fundamental skills that aid in me becoming a better cybersecurity professional. It gets me into the Linux command line more often so that I become more familiar and faster and accomplishing system administrator type tasks. I gain a familiarity of the file system structure of Linux and Windows when it comes to System Administrator relevant files. I learn a great deal about networking and troubleshooting network related issues. These tasks make me faster at navigating to the places I need and recall the information I may require in Cybersecurity tasks.
Goals Fulfilled by the Internship
To date, I am underway to meet my goals as I continue to work with Systems Group. I have access to systems, services and the people who work with them everyday so that I can learn daily more about how they work, how to manage and be efficient in their use. I believe time is required to become highly effective and I am willing to stick around to achieve that goal.
Motivating and Exciting Aspects
The most motivating aspect of working at Systems Group is seeing those that have been there longer than I and being excited to know as much as they do when I get to that point. Just being able to jump from one topic to the other, from one system to the other and being able to follow would be a great thing for me.
Recommendations for Future Interns
I would inquire about volunteering before applying for the position. A lot of people tend to have a lot of different ideas about what working at Systems Group will do for them, experiencing it firsthand is the best way to get a feel for it. If you shadow someone for a few weeks, I think would give a good expectation of how the day in and day out could go.
Conclusion
In conclusion, working for Systems Group has a lot of potential and I want to take advantage of the most of it that I can. This includes me having access to systems used in a production environment dealing with everyday issues from users we support, working those issues with knowledgeable staff gaining my own experience to pay it forward. I am limited in my time for Systems Group and do only my required hours because I feel my studies of a full course load demand that be my priority. I am willing to gain my experience in a slow but steady strain method, instead of diving completely in until my course load situation can change.