The previous week was one of high accomplishment. I was unable to post earlier due to a current medical disability that has limited the use of my hand. I achieved one of the major goals set forth during this internship by earning my Comp Tia Security+ certification. Our executive leadership team, Brian and Karla, have already encouraged me to begin thinking about getting my CISSP and PMP certifications. One of the best things about the internship here is that I was not plugged in to one specific repetitive task. My mentor, Sheila, has encouraged me at every given chance and has exposed me to a wealth of knowledge that I feel contributed greatly to successfully achieving my certification. Sheila, along with Dr. Voortman my academic counselor, have brought up a very good point in that a certification may show you are committed to the IT industry and may get you in to the interview but it needs to be backed up with experience and knowledge, both of which I have gained while working here.

In addition to the normal work load of tickets I’ve also learned more about the VPNs that we use and how they allow us to securely access our information to work remotely. I was also able to learn some basic cryptography with different ciphers used for encryption and how they are decrypted. There was also some learning about our RSA keys that we use  and two party authentications. Security is an area I’d like to specialize in and I feel I am definitely on the right track. I would score this week as five out of five stars for earning my cert and all the progress I’ve made.