The Coastal Virginia Commonwealth Cyber Initiative (COVA CCI) Internship – Intern Cyber Consultant
Reflection Paper 1
September 15, 2024
It’s an honor to have been selected for this opportunity and the fact that this paper marks the first 50 hours of completion is amazing. My experience thus far has been full of educational experiences, team bonding, and inspiration all around. In this writing, I will highlight a couple of those experiences that have truly stuck out as beneficial to me and summarize what we’ve done so far.
I have learned to change my perspective by changing my way of doing things. This lesson was taught by the first guest lecturer Dr. John Baaki. Dr. Baaki is an interesting character who helped us get out of our heads and into the zone with fun exercises and thoughtful scenarios. He gave us a challenge: to pick a normal activity that we partake in daily and do it in a
way that was completely foreign to us. I chose to participate by using the example given, brushing my teeth with my less dominant hand. This exercise helped me to understand myself a bit more and strengthened my focus and willpower. Another challenge he gave us was to work in our team to create and present an Incident Response Plan for the scenario he had prepared for us. This exercise helped me to get to know the peers I will be working with
this semester and helped with my confidence.
In summary, the class has truly helped me to change my perspective on teamwork. It has also assisted me in getting out of my head and having faith in my abilities to produce good work, especially when working with others who are equally as capable. I anticipate the successful completion of this internship.
Reflection Paper 2
October 30, 2024
I found pleasure such a simple thing: the preparation of documents for the presentation. It was required that we have printed out an adequate number of copies of documentation. The reasoning behind this was so that we wanted everyone in our audience to be able to follow along with the presentation. The job I had came from tasks such as operating the printer machine, stapling packets together, as well as placing those documents neatly on the table where our audience would be seated.
I truly enjoyed presenting the final report to our organization better than our practice rounds. Being able to relay information to Ms. Shadley relevant to her organization (i.e. weaknesses in the form lack of hyperawareness training, education her on how to implement cyber best practices and create an incident response plan) in a confident manner that was easy to understand brought me joy. I look forward to being able to relay important cyber information to audiences ore in the future.
Individual Reflection
November 8, 2024
In your individual reflection, what went right? What went wrong? What are your personal lessons learned? If you could do the project over, what would you do differently?
What went right were our interactions with our CEO, Ms. Shadley. As a team, we were able to properly decide what information we needed from the CEO and how we would use that information. Ms. Shadley was easy to communicate with. Whenever we wanted to meet with her, she ensured we had her contact information and availability to do so. What went wrong is the differing levels of effort from team members. From the inside looking out I’m sure it felt worse than it actually was, as whenever I made a request I would definitely be assisted or made aware of something I didn’t know previously. We did find it best to split up the work individually. This way, we would each be responsible for something. Later, we would come together with the parts we did individually and find a way to mesh it together. We did this by having in person meetings – usually at the Perry Library – outside of class hours.
If I could do this project over, firstly I would find a better way to accomplish the goals and requirements/coursework involved. Maybe asking my teammates for resources or solutions to problems would have helped. I also would have found some way to be able to use a vulnerability scanner like the other teams did, like Tenable.io. TRS Productions didn’t have its own software, however, maybe we could have run a vulnerability scan on its websites. We could have even scanned the third-party systems it does use, like Facebook, Instagram or Dubsado.
For each outcome or objective you explained your Memorandum of Agreement, describe how the internship fulfilled or didn’t fulfill the goal.
I definitely learned entry level cybersecurity consulting in this internship. The process of doing so initially required doing an assessment of the business. The purpose of the assessment is to find what cybersecurity practices are and are not already in implementation by managerial controls. In this assessment, we would also find what assets the organization has that are important for it to protect. The next step was to use the information we got from the assessment to do a gap analysis. What practices were lacking, what practices needed improvement? This also involved finding or creating appropriate resources for the business to use in its implementation. In the case of TRS Productions, we created employee cybersecurity training for the CEO so that she would have a resource to use when addressing the lack of cybersecurity best practices education and training for her employees and assistance. At the end of it all, we created a final report to express everything we found and created with the CEO.
The internship lacked from my expectation that we would be working with a system that was already established. I initially thought that if one is in an internship, they are being brought into a well established system, and would just be learning from that system and fulfilling a role in that system. For example (in theory) a bank intern would go to a bank and learn how the bank system works and learn how to fill a certain bank position. Instead, we seemed to need to search for the space we would fill ourselves and build from there. Thinking about it now, it makes sense that our titles were “Intern Consultants.” Also, because in cybersecurity there is such a thing as threat hunting where we actively search for vulnerabilities and such. So, while the expectation wasn’t met, I understand why that expectation wasn’t met.
There was also the opportunity to gain experience in speaking and relaying important information with an audience during this internship, which was one thing I expected to gain. I really enjoyed it, especially when I took the time to practice and display confidence in public speaking. The experience of learning and being able to demonstrate how cybersecurity relates to a very small business has been important and beneficial, as I read somewhere that over 90% of American businesses are small businesses.
What are your thoughts about working on this team? What were the team dynamics?
I felt a bit awkward being the only female on the team, but I guess that’s okay since most of the interns this semester were male. My teammates unanimously decided that I would be the lead so I made sure to create all the documents we needed, arrange meeting times with the team and CEO, and ensure things were moving smoothly. Eric was my co-lead: he found ways to supplement where I was lacking and research resources that were very important to our success. Dip at times seemed less passionate about the process, however, was always willing to contribute. He created a solid foundation of our employee training deliverable once I assigned him the task. I felt very self conscious working in this dynamic, because I thought many times that my effort alone would not be enough to bring the team together.
Describe the most motivating or exciting aspects of the internship.
The most exciting part for me was having the opportunity to canvas different local businesses and organizations when using the Valor Security Top 10 Digital Assessment. I have held three different positions doing door to door type sales: water, solar power, and charity fundraising. While I didn’t stay long at any of these positions, there was always the thrill of going out to speak to many people in a day about some important cause that meant so much to me. That is why this part was exciting for me. It was motivating because for all of these jobs I had a panic attack when going out to speak. Doing this canvassing as a Cyber Intern was a calmer experience for me.
Describe the most challenging aspects of the internship.
The most challenging part of this is learning how to lead, and learning how to mesh with my teammates. We all had different personalities and areas of expertise, and while it was a challenge to work together, our differences were important in the experiences.
List your recommendations for future interns in this internship. What preparations do interns need before starting the internship?
My recommendation to prepare for the internship for future students is to be ready to get to work. While this internship isn’t necessarily difficult in theme, some aspects can be, like finding ways to properly manage and assign responsibilities. Maybe learning how to connect and work with people of different personalities can be a valuable workshop. Also, future interns should have or at least already be working on good time management skills, as it is very necessary. Another thing is to maybe check in with each team to ensure they are on the right track in successfully completing what is required/expected of the internship. Preferably about a week after the teams have met with the CEO’s and are establishing the basis of their reports.
Conclusion: Summarize your main ‘take away’ thoughts from your internship experience
Describe how your internship experience will influence the remainder of your college time at ODU
This Internship Clinic was the perfect experience to have as my first internship. It was just challenging enough without being stressful. The experience seemed to give us insight on how it would be to contract a service for an organization. The internship has inspired me to really lock in on gaining the experience and skills I need that will give me a leg up in the field.
Describe how your internship experience will influence your future professional path or planning
While I am sure I will stay on the path of completing my Cybersecurity degree, I have the desire to learn more about and one day fill a software engineering/security position. This will require more than what we are learning in this major, so I have added a Computer Science minor to my degree. I have also been taking my time to learn some coding outside of school and I hope I am on the right path for this. The internship has helped me to value teamwork and accountability. Since starting the internship program, I have started a small study group where we are studying for the CompTIA Security+ certification. We are not only reading textbooks, but using virtually lab environments to gain some experience in implementing what we are learning.
Recommendations to revise the course.
For the most part I have honestly truly enjoyed this experience. If anything, I would say some intervention could be done to help determine if the group leaders and team members are operating properly in their positions effectively would be helpful.