Updates

Our Intern Spotlight is a series of posts throughout the summer highlighting the experiences of TDi’s cybersecurity interns as they develop their skills to be the next defenders of IT and OT operations. If you missed our first Intern Spotlight with Hector, our UI and UX intern, you can read it here.

To learn more about TDi’s internship program and how we are growing the next set of IT and OT security professionals, you can read our cybersecurity internship overview here.

Meet Jonathan, our Development Cybersecurity Intern

Jonathan is a computer science major and our intern on the development team. He has always enjoyed technology, especially computers and software. When he took his first computer science class in high school, he found himself drawn to the problem solving and logical aspects of coding.

He continued this path into college, picking up his initial internship with TDi during his first summer there. He wanted to learn more about the field of cybersecurity and software development, like how developing and delivering software really worked outside of the classroom.

Now a college senior, he’s also a veteran intern at TDi. Jonathan has interned with us during his summers and winters since 2019 and is preparing to enter the professional world. Below, we ask Jonathan about his experiences during the cybersecurity internship.

Intern Spotlight

What do you want to do when you graduate?

I think I like the software development path. I like working to solve problems and fixing them using logic and thinking, that sort of thing. That’s a pretty big branch in the field on its own, but if I could continue here at TDi, I would love that.

So, software development is the big answer. The smaller answer after that, I’m not quite so sure.

Has your cybersecurity internship experience helped you achieve your career goals?

Yea absolutely. My first month of my first summer, I learned just as much, if not more, about programming and coding than in school. Professional coding more specifically, instead of just textbook problems and things of that nature, which has been a really great experience.

Being able to work for 40 hours a week for 10 to 12 weeks of summer has really helped me learn exponentially faster than you do in the classroom. Being able to work with a team of people that have been in the industry for a long time, and that have a lot of experience that can guide me and tell me where to look and how to fix problems, has really helped my general problem-solving skills. That’s been really great to help me get set.

Initially going into the internship, I wasn’t 100 percent sure that I was going to be good enough to work in the industry or be good enough to do an engineering job or anything like that. This has really made me confident in my decision that this is something that I would want to do.

Is working in cybersecurity what you thought it would be or did something surprise you?

I was definitely surprised when I started working in cybersecurity. I didn’t have any knowledge of what professional cybersecurity looked like. I just had generic movie ideas of hackers and coding and trying to fight against people trying to come into your network.

But the real surprise for me came in developing a software to prevent that. I had never considered that a software like ConsoleWorks would be an effective cybersecurity measure because I had never been exposed to that kind of thing before.

What about working in software development, did something surprise you there?

I didn’t know what to expect coming in. I was expecting that it would be pretty hard to do. Generally, a lot of working with ConsoleWorks has been something I can pick up and learn faster than I thought I would be able to.

So that has been surprising for me. I didn’t think I would be useful to the company or the engineering department in the way that I have been – the projects I’ve been able to work on, the things I’ve been able to do.

What have you been working on?

Last summer, my biggest project was on a baseline script that monitored everything that happened in a section of time since the baseline’s previous run. It monitored everything that happened in ConsoleWorks. If you run this baseline on Tuesday and on Wednesday someone logs in, accesses consoles, adds two devices and deletes two others, they log out, and the next day you run the baseline again, everything is monitored there.

You can see the changes between the previous run and the current run. Which was really good for a customer to see, to give them an easier roadmap of what had been happening in a day, a week, or a month in ConsoleWorks or if anything major had changed.

The summer before that, I worked with engineering and devops on a Nozomi integration. I was working on writing scripts that would help capture data and integrate with ConsoleWorks, putting all of that inside of a dashboard. Those have been my biggest projects.

The first summer I got here was a lot of developing work. Learning about ConsoleWorks, what consoles are, how it relates to the software and everything that is tracked and monitored.

Since then, a lot of my work has been with baselines, like writing baselines and writing the example system for baselines. It was my job to familiarize myself with them and I wrote a small paper about effective ways to utilize baselines.

What’s the most challenging part of your cybersecurity internship?

One of the most challenging things has been adjusting from the instructor/teacher style of classes, to teaching myself and being self-reliant with a lot of things. That’s not to say I haven’t had help along the way, all of the team is there and helping me with any questions I have.

But when I encounter a problem or I have a question, my first thought that I try to start with is “how can I fix this myself? Is there a solution I can find or something I can read that will help me fix this problem?” It’s been rewarding, because as I’ve gotten better, it’s made me more productive and less reliant on other people.

While it’s definitely been a challenge to learn at a different level and develop at a different level doing different types of work compared to textbook problems, it’s been equally rewarding.

What is your favorite thing about working at TDi?

Working in teams and being able to accomplish things bigger than what I would be able to do myself. And the general satisfaction and pride that you get from working on a project and putting a lot of time and effort into it, and then pushing that project out to customers who will use it and find it helpful for their business. It’s a really rewarding feeling.

That’s not something you quite get in the education system. It’s similar to getting a good grade or feedback, but people are paying for what I’m making, so they expect something quality and being able to provide that is a good thing.

What would you tell a student interested in an internship at TDi?

I would say just try not to be intimidated. Come in with coachability and stay openminded to learning and to taking challenges head on. Try to accomplish things that you never have before. At times it can seem difficult, but it’s equally rewarding in that aspect.

If you keep working at it and just keep chipping away, even if it means some days you don’t get much done, or feel like you wasted your time or day, if you come back and you make a breakthrough then you’ll forget about what happened and it’ll be worth it.

It’s a great company with a lot of great people. The engineering team, which I’ve been working with the most, has been extremely helpful in helping me learn and aren’t agitated when I ask 10 or 20 questions a day. It’s been a great experience.

Keep Watch for More Internship Spotlights

We have more on the way! Stay tuned to our updates page for the latest on our internship spotlights and other updates for cybersecurity in IT and OT operations.

To learn more about TDi’s internship program and how we are growing this country’s next set of IT and OT defenders, you can also read our cybersecurity internship overview here.

This summer we’re highlighting experiences from our cybersecurity internship. Our interns immerse in the world of cybersecurity for IT and OT operations and become part of the team at TDi. They contribute to projects and learn the soft and hard skills that help them succeed professionally.

If you missed it, you can read our cybersecurity internship program overview here to see our approach to cultivating the next group of leaders to protect  IT and OT operations.

Meet Hector, our Cybersecurity Intern for UI and UX Design

For this intern spotlight we sat down with Hector to learn about his experiences at TDi working on user experience design and how his passion for all things graphic design landed him a spot in this summer’s cybersecurity internship program.

Hector initially found his love for graphic design by creating thumbnails for his YouTube videos. From there he pursued design courses in high school to learn more and build upon the fundamentals of graphic design.

Eventually he entered graphic design competitions, getting first in the DFW region, and even going all the way to the state championship, taking third place.

His focus in college is on UI and UX design and creating mobile app interfaces. We asked Hector some questions about his experience during the internship and his advice to other students who are considering an internship.

Intern Spotlight

What do you want to do when you graduate?

That’s definitely something I have been thinking about a lot recently, because I’m approaching my senior year. Ideally, I would want to do something very similar to what I’m doing at TDi, like UI development and UI design.

How has your experience in the cybersecurity internship at TDi helped you on your career track?

It definitely skyrocketed my progress toward wanting to do UI! Prior to this, my choices have been either general graphic design or working as a social media manager. With my Cybersecurity Internship here, I’ve learned so much about the process of designing user flows, wireframing and creating mockups at a much higher level.

I’m able to put a lot of thought into the things that I’m doing, especially since we’re working in advance for what we need to push out, so I’m not thinking “okay let’s just get something done.” I’m thinking a lot more about the quality of the product.

And in general, working with the engineering and devops teams has been super informative to understanding their thought process, and understanding the limitations of programming, so I’m not designing something extremely overboard. It’s nice to sit down and understand where the limitations are and where my priorities should be.

What have you learned about cybersecurity that surprised you?

I’ve learned a lot and there’s still so much I’m learning every day. Just working on the platform itself, working on all the dashboards [for ConsoleWorks] and realizing just how many devices and events there could potentially be.

There are things our team must consider for the ConsoleWorks user – if they’re a beginner or light user of ConsoleWorks, or a heavy user that has multiple devices and dozens of events for each of those devices. Regardless of the situation, it’s important that ConsoleWorks is user friendly and that all the performance and control is there at both levels.

Cybersecurity is definitely a lot more intricate than I originally thought and it’s something I want to learn more about. I think that being in this position, I’m definitely learning every single day, which is exactly what I want to do.

What have you been working on?

I have been extensively working on designing both from the frontend, to creating documentation and going over other projects too.

The main priority has been on our dashboards. Creating new iconography for the widgets and giving it a facelift. We’re heavily considering the feedback from our customers about how they use the platform and how they ideally want to use the platform. I’m trying to design the platform around their wants and uses to fulfill their objectives when using ConsoleWorks.

What’s the most challenging part of your internship?

The most challenging so far has been that I’m so accustomed to that “get in and get out” type workflow from previous jobs. This is a lot more “take your time, make sure the product is good” so we get things in there without any issues.

I get to make my work professional and high quality before we’re pushing it out to users. Because we have huge companies using our product, we want to make sure that the platform is top quality.

What has been your favorite thing about the internship?

My favorite thing has been presenting my proposals or documentation and ideas to devops, my mentor and others throughout the internship. It has been really refreshing hearing great feedback from them and on my work so far. It has been really reassuring.

What would you tell a student interested in interning at TDi?

I would say just go for it!

I know a big thing, especially for college students, is the fear of rejection. I’ve had that same fear myself. I applied for this position knowing that I am capable of doing all of the tasks that are required and that I have plenty of experience. Both work but also in-school experience. So, I applied, but I still had doubts in myself. But look where I’m at now.

Just know that you’re more than capable of interning, whether it be here with TDi or wherever else your ventures take you. Just believe in yourself, that’s the main thing.

Stay tuned for more Internship Spotlights

Keep your eyes fixed on our updates page as we have more intern spotlights coming throughout the summer!

Zero Trust security is a model and set of system design principles that assumes a breach in your network is inevitable or that a breach has already occurred.

A Zero Trust cybersecurity model uses a mixture of system monitoring, secure remote access and security automations to maintain the security of your environment and give a user the least-privileged access required to endpoints within your network.

Though Zero Trust isn’t something new – it was popularized by Forrester in the ‘00s – the calls for moving to a Zero Trust architecture this year have never sounded so urgent. Watching the breaches from the past twelve months, from the SolarWinds breach, Colonial Pipeline breach and Microsoft announcing a second attack from the same group who committed the SolarWinds breach, one can see why.

President Biden signed an executive order calling for the need to implement Zero Trust cybersecurity measures immediately to improve the nation’s security and protect federal government networks.

These recent attacks were significant. They were breaches permitting access to some of our nation’s most critical networks and infrastructure. They are the biggest warnings yet that cybersecurity infrastructure in this country is not ready to handle the sophistication of its adversaries.

Why Implement Zero Trust Cybersecurity

There are many reasons for implementing a Zero Trust security model. These past 12 months have only added more urgency to this move:

• Increases in remote workers
• Evolving and increasingly complex supply chains
• Organizations moving to cloud and Software as a Service
• Accelerated adoption of new technologies
• Increases in the number of cyberattacks and in their sophistication
• Aging operational technology

Viewed together, we can see we are already in an environment requiring stricter security measures. The traditional model does not work well against the sophisticated attacks we have recently seen.

Where a traditional cybersecurity approach takes a trust but verify view of allowing access, a Zero Trust approach never trusts the user and assumes worst intent. This moves an organization away from assuming someone within the network is verified and is a trusted, privileged actor who should be there.

Implementing Zero Trust Architecture

Zero Trust itself is not a technology, but a shift in design approach. Implementing a Zero Trust architecture requires buy in at all levels of your organization, in addition to technology enabling its core principles. You are moving from a perimeter-based defense to access-based defense, from a reactive defense to a proactive defense.

To begin a successful implementation, you must address the following:

• Know your most valuable data, assets, applications and services. Where they are, who accesses them and how
• Limiting and controlling access to endpoints
• Threat detection in your environment
• Your company’s current knowledge of cybersecurity best practices

With these key elements in mind, design your Zero Trust implementation to have:

• Role-based, privileged access giving a user only the access needed to perform their role at the right time and in the right context.
• Thorough system monitoring and logging of all users to know what is happening when, where, by whom and how.
• Education and buy in at all levels of the business for a Zero Trust mentality

Privileged, secure remote access ensures a user receives only the level of access they need, and only when they need it, to perform their role and nothing more. Users receive no additional information about your network than is necessary. ConsoleWorks always checks who the user is, gathering contextual information about them every time.

Users log into ConsoleWorks, which manages the connections to the endpoints and keeps sensitive information like passwords to your devices out of the hands of potential threats.

User activity is logged while accessing the environment and the endpoint’s configuration is monitored, ensuring inputs or changes have not been made by the user that would indicate a threat or attack.

You should also ensure all your partners are doing their best to maintain secure environments within their own operations. With compromises to many companies happening from supply chain breaches, TDi Technologies completed its SOC for Supply Chain examination to be a secure link in our partners’ chains.

 Zero Trust Model Benefits

A Zero Trust environment gives you more opportunities to detect threat actors in addition to giving more response options to quickly deploy and address the threat. This, together with a company-wide mindset around the Zero Trust mentality, primes you from top to bottom to notice the subtle threat indicators that many companies miss during an attack.

With the level of sophistication in attacks now surpassing traditional defensive capabilities of many companies in the United States, and critical industrial control systems in our country facing these new threats, a Zero Trust approach is more important than ever.

Transitioning your IT or OT operations to Zero Trust? ConsoleWorks simplifies your access, logging and monitoring needs in one secure operations platform. Talk to us about your Zero Trust needs here to make sure you’re doing it right.

This summer we are hiring interns who will immerse in the world of cybersecurity and operations in information technology and operations technology applications. TDi Technologies’ Summer Internship Program is a deeply technical, higher education program firmly grounded in computer science and cybersecurity and operations disciplines, with extensive hands-on applications in IT and OT.

With the shortage of skills in the market, TDi is doing its part to encourage students entering higher education to consider careers in cybersecurity.

We believe in the value a great internship program gives to students. It’s important to cultivate career development and personal growth opportunities that help students gain applicable knowledge and abilities to give them a competitive edge and hone critical soft skills.

Each year we hire five interns to work on projects at TDi. These projects develop an understanding of cybersecurity for IT and OT, industry challenges and real-world experience. We match the projects with the students based on their current skill level.

As they learn more and acquire more abilities, we continue putting them on projects that challenge them in new ways and allow them to grow further. In addition to future careers at TDi, our interns have  gone on to have internships with the NSA and Department of Defense – a testament, in part, to the quality of our program.

This Year’s Internship Opportunities

TDi has two types of internship opportunities: high school or college internships, which can receive classroom credit, and independent internships.

TDi recruits students from a number of resources: directly from college career centers, from people within the cybersecurity industry as well as from the CyberPatriot program, which TDi has sponsored.

Interns can focus their experience this year on the following key areas:

• Product development
• UI / UX design
• Graphic design
• DevOps

We’re eager to help this summer’s interns develop their abilities and professional networks while learning key skills that lead them into careers in cybersecurity.

Looking at the future growth of this industry, we will see more job openings than there are people to fill these roles. It is important that we all do our part to make sure we are contributing to a more secure future, especially as cybersecurity for critical infrastructure becomes a key focus for the country.

“It’s all of our responsibilities to encourage the future talent coming into college to have a career in cybersecurity,” Pam Johnson, Vice President of Operations and Customer Experience at TDi Technologies said, “we are doing our part to cultivate their beginnings.”

TDi’s Learning Environment

Our learning environment is geared toward immersing students in the world of cybersecurity and IT and OT operations. There are on-going teachings from TDi’s experts, providing the background and understanding needed to be successful while learning the ins and outs of applying ConsoleWorks to solve cybersecurity and operations issues.

Each student communicates his or her goals for the internship before beginning a project. This ensures students are working on projects that fulfill their individual objectives and priorities during their time with us.

Everyone is a part of the team here. Each intern receives a mentor, who will guide and help them along for the duration of their internship. They also have access to the resources, people and calendars they need to make sure they’re getting the most out of their experience.

There are both mid-summer and exit evaluations, so students can review how their skills are developing as they reach key milestones throughout the summer program. At the conclusion of the internship, students will have the opportunity to demonstrate their efforts with a presentation showing their work and accomplishments. Various awards are given to interns for completing their projects with us over the summer months.

More Internship Updates

Keep your eyes on our company updates page! As the summer months progress and our interns start tackling new projects and immersing in the world of cybersecurity, we’ll be highlighting their experiences on this page.