Introduction

This internship is like no other. It is a 15-week program designed as a cybersecurity clinic. Professor Durvall, Internship Director & COVA CCI Outreach Officer, lead the charge. She gave us the rundown the beginning weeks of class. She taught us about the NIST Framework, Cyber Risk and Ethics, and CISA’s CPGs (Cybersecurity Performance Goals). All this information was very beneficial for us because it gave us context of the needed knowledge to do well in this class. The reason why I say that this internship is like no other is because of the structure. The first couple of weeks is a typical lecture style of learning; However, the later portions were much different. In total, there are exactly fifteen students in the class, and they were split up into teams of three. Our professor gave us the option to either work with a small-business or a local government. During this course, our purpose was to provide Cybersecurity-as-a-Service to them, such as assessing their systems, analyzing their network traffic, and overall securing their business from a technological side.

The Good


Some things that I loved about this internship were the number of guests that the professor would bring. It felt like a late-night talk show, every class day had a new person that was very interesting to listen from. The first one being John Baaki, Associate Professor of the Department of STEM Education & Professional Studies. He was a very fun and motivating guest. His main goal was to teach us Design Thinking, which, in a high-level, is the process of learning and understanding a problem and providing a thought-provoking solution. His portions of the class were very fun because he taught us how to get out of our heads when presenting. We played fun games that allowed us to think quickly with our feet. It was a very enjoyable part of the internship. Another guest would be Greg Tomchick, CEO of Valor Cybersecurity. What I liked about this section of the internship was the “going out to the streets” part. The things that we learned from the Design Thinking section really applied to this one. Going out to different business gave me the confidence that I needed. It also granted me the opportunity to get to know my teammates better.


Most motivating


The most motivating part about this internship was the idea that the things that we were doing in class would actually make a difference to society. For instance, our contributions to our vulnerability assessment to Suffolk allowed them to see their vulnerabilities in a new perspective. It was very satisfying for them to say that the work we’ve done was excellent. Both parties really benefited from this internship.


The Bad


There wasn’t that much bad in this internship; However, if I had to nit-pick some things, it would be to find a resolution the Valor Top 10. In regard to Suffolk Team A & B, we never had a satisfying closure to that segment. I saw that the other teams were much more involved with Valor Cybersecurity than us. I wish to lessen the “on out the streets days” to just one week. Two times were fine in my opinion, but only do it for one week. Stretching it out to multiple weeks felt very inefficient.


Most challenging


The most challenging part about this internship was creating a schedule that aligned with both my teammates and our client


Lessons Learned


One lesson that I learned is that every team is different. You must be able to adapt to new surroundings. Collaboration and communication is key because without it, no progress will be done. Another lesson would be to take things one step at a time. Throughout the internship, there were some instances where I felt overwhelmed. So, understanding to take things one step at a time allowed me to process information much easier.


Try Again!


If I could have done the project over again, what would I do differently? First, I would have done a crash course on Vulnerability Manager that Suffolk uses, Tenable.io. Learning about this tool beforehand would have made the process of analyzing vulnerabilities much more efficient.


M.O.A. Outcome

  1. Talking and embracing Cybersecurity as a career and a passion more into my life.
    a. I embraced Cybersecurity with open arms. If you could open my YouTube Home feed, all you would see would be cyber videos. That definitely says something about my current interests. I see this as a passion of mine and I hope that continues in the future.
  2. Working with other determined-minded individuals to accomplish a common goal
    a. Edwin and Brayden were great team-mates. Edwin was very good at organizing and staying on top of everything and Brayden was a cybersecurity encyclopedia. Both were very knowledge and very great to work with
  3. Learning more about Cybersecurity as a topic, diving deeper into the world
    a. Being able to surround myself with like-minded individuals really helped me pursue and chase my goals even more
  4. Using my knowledge of Cybersecurity and applying it to real life
    a. Suffolk did exactly just that. Using tenable and seeing their serving room was very eye-opening
  5. Gain important advice from the ODU Faculty, or any professional in this field
    a. Every second, I was soaking up information from them. I’m truly grateful

Recommendations for future interns!

What preparations do interns need before starting the internship? First off, make sure you understand basic cybersecurity terminology, such as types of vulnerabilities, types of frameworks, etc. It’s also important to know some networking tools such nmap or Wireshark because they might be handy when you are conducting analysis on your client.

My Take Away’s

Overall, I loved my experience with this internship. Everyone in the class was very friendly and very fun to be around. This internship experience will influence the remainder of my college time at ODU tremendously. I will now look more appealing to employers, and it granted me my first step to my professional future. I would like to thank Professor Durvall for reaching out via phone to offer me this internship.