Course: CYSE 368 – Cybersecurity Internship

Artifact Type: Internship Reflection

Overview

This reflection documents an internship experience involving recurring disconnections for an employee using Azure Virtual Desktop. This situation required both technical troubleshooting and professional communication. Resolving the issue required identifying the root cause, obtaining access to necessary diagnostic tools, and communicating findings to leadership. The experience demonstrated the importance of combining technical knowledge with effective workplace communication and problem solving.

My Work

During the incident, I investigated the disconnections affecting an employee’s ability to work remotely. Early in the troubleshooting process, I identified that I didn’t have the necessary permissions to access AVD diagnostic information within the Azure portal. After communicating the limitations this created and explaining the troubleshooting steps I had already completed, I was granted read access to AVD Insights for further investigation.

Using AVD events and log data, I correlated disconnect events with timestamps and identified evidence showing memory exhaustion on the host virtual machine. I documented the findings and presented the information to my supervisor. Because I only had read permissions, the issue was escalated to personnel with the appropriate administrative rights. After additional memory was allocated to the virtual machine, the employee’s connection issues were resolved.

Artifact

Skills Demonstrated

This experience highlighted the value of persistence and evidence-based decision making. I used system logs and monitoring data to identify the root cause of the disconnections rather than relying on assumptions or bringing it to my supervisor without thoroughly troubleshooting. This situation helped strengthen my confidence in communicating technical information to leadership and advocating for the resources needed to effectively investigate the problem.