Reflection #3

Tristan L Cole

4/5/26

CYSE 368

Spring 2026

Professor Teresa Duvall

TA Joshua Russell

Old Dominion University Help Desk

Since my last reflection, I have grown more confident in my role. My peers and I have moved on from being in the conference with the trainer to being put in the lobby with all the other Tier 1 technicians. Also in this time frame, my trainer along with a couple of other Tier 1 techs got promoted to the ‘escalation team’. They no longer handle calls and walk-ins unless we are remarkably busy or short-staffed (which is almost never the case). They handle tickets that Tier 1 techs cannot resolve on their own but refrain from escalating the ticket any further. While doing that, they also mentor so that there is continuous process improvement for those of us that are not quite that experienced.

The focus that I have been tasked with is to handle most of the incoming password resets and two-factor authentication. During my training I created a word-for-word template of what I needed to say and how to walk a customer through a password reset. Since then, I hardly use my template and have gained much confidence in talking to people over the phone. We have many faculty and students here at the University that have diverse backgrounds so at times, there is a language barrier. Most notably, I have had one customer who was in Isreal at the time so catching up with the student was difficult because of the difference in time zones. However, we did manage to connect and get that password reset taken care of. Some of the other customers I have helped have come directly from the motherland. The accent was thick, so it took a while for us to understand each other but understand each other we did and I was able to get her the help she needed. I also had a faculty member who was not very tech savvy. This was by far the longest call I ever had. It last approximately 45 mins and it was also the first time I use Duo-100, which is an older form two-factor authentication. I had to get the tech that was stationed next to me to help with the call because there was still much I did not know. Aside project that I have been recently tasked with is to create and Excell workbook categorizing phishing incidents. My first task was to create an excel spreadsheet that broke down phishing tickets by year. More specifically, it was a breakdown per month for both years. The tier 2 technician who assigned me this task was pleased with the work I had done and the quickness with which I completed the task. I was able to finish my task so fast because I was able to set the conditions on which I was able to isolate the incidents I needed per month and we had many technicians on hand during my shift so there was more down time than anticipated. My next assignment was to populate the incidents per month going all the way back to 2023. This was not an arduous task as I already knew how to set up the conditions for my search, but it took a little longer because I had tack on an additional 24 months. Nevertheless, I completed this assignment as well and the tech who assigned the work to me was glad and astonished at the numbers that I produced. The next assignment that I am currently working on was to create a spreadsheet for the months with the highest incidents by day. For my sample set I only did the four months with the highest incidents. This task is taking longer because there are so many days to do and I only have limited time to work on it. I am curious to see what the numbers will show.

I am fortunate to be taking CPD395_ 33773 TPSC: SERVICENOW ADMIN & ITSM. This is a new class that is being offered in second session of the current semester. This class allows me to gain firsthand experience through virtual labs and presentations. I mention this class because the Help Desk uses ServiceNow as their platform for delivering IT services to their customers.