Internship Experience at Company X

My Semester-in-Residence Project was conducted at Company X. Company X operates a large data center. After an application and interview process, I was invited to intern with Company X. My project goals were to observe, learn, and practice concepts from my cybersecurity education as they applied to real-world applications. I was given many resources including access to equipment, access to tools, and unrestricted access to Company X employees to ask any questions or request clarification. While at Company X, I was asked to hunt and isolate malicious external IPs as well as compromised internal IPs and add them to a block list. I was able to see attacks happening in real-time. I created various deliverable for Company X such as data flowcharts and malware analysis sheets. An additional assigned task was to migrate virtual machines from the existing unsupported VMware environment to the OpenStack environment. Company X has a penetration testing team and I was able to learn some of the tools and techniques they used, as well as the importance of contracts that specify the rules of engagement. I appreciate my internship experiences at Company X and will carry them with me throughout my professional career.