Stafford County Fire and Rescue IT Department

Overview:

I completed my intership with the Stafford County Fire and Rescue IT Department. My main responsibilities included:

• Maintain and support IT requests from employees and volunteers in the Fire and Rescue department
• Maintain accurate records of assets
• Support and enhance the technical capabilities of the department
• Support and repair devices in the Fire service
• Implement systems in order to improve efficiency in the department

As a part of the team, I took on the role of the primary helpdesk technician. This role included interfacing with the firefighters, paramedics, leadership and civilian staff of the Fire and Rescue Department. It was my responsibility to ensure the technological needs, security, and reliability of the Fire and Rescue Department are maintained and enhanced.

During my internship, I frequently imaged and deployed devices to members. This included upgrades to systems no longer receiving updates, broken devices, and items that no longer met the needs of the task they were used for. Through this process, I learned the steps of enrolling the devices in an Active Directory domain and also began the process of managing assets.

Managing assets was a focal point of my internship as the Fire department had recently adopted software for this very purpose. As part of this experience, I inventoried many of the computers, iPads, radios, and other equipment managed by the IT department. After inventory was taken, I uploaded the inventory to the software and began the process of assigning the devices to the locations and users they belonged. This was a pivotal step in securing the physical and intellectual property of the department as we could now effectively track assets and hold users accountable for them.

In an effort to secure devices further and provide a standard for the department, I introduced an Mobile Device Manager (MDM). This MDM allows me to remotely control and wipe out iPads deployed in the field. In this way, if a device is lost or stolen, I can remotely disable or even wipe an iPad. In addition, each iPad is set up exactly the same to ensure a similar experience no matter what vehicle or iPad was used that day. This is still a work in progess as there are some improvements to the process that can be made.

I also aided in the applying some least privilege principles in our shared drive for the department. Starting with our financial side, I began to apply appropriate permissions to folders within the drive to ensure that only users who were meant to access could access the information. By setting these permissions now, people can use the framework in the future to design the layout and permission of any other shared drives the department may need.

I worked closely in each of these instances with the leadership and experts in the field. In a live environment like the Fire Department, there are no closing times and no down days. It has been a pleasure to work with the proud members of this Department and I hope my impact makes for a positive change in the future.

Located below are my reflections throughout my intersnship and my final paper:

Reflection 1

Reflection-Paper-1

Reflection 2

Reflection-Paper-2

Reflection 3

Reflection-Paper-3

Final Paper

Final-Paper