For three weeks, students from several universities such as Northwestern, Rutgers, and IU, convened in the Cyberinfrastructure Building (CIB)’s Wrubel Commons for the in-person portion of the OmniSOC cybersecurity internship.
The six-week paid program provided students with mentoring and guidance by subject matter experts in the three components of a security operations center (SOC)—Tier 1 service desk operations, security engineering, and platform. Conducted in a hybrid setting, the first three weeks took place at the CIB in Bloomington, IN. Interns traveled back home for weeks four through six and gained relevant experience in a remote work environment and finished their final projects.
Activities included an orientation, platform engineering sessions, security engineering sessions, service desk/Tier 1 engineering sessions, and an SOC field trip.
It’s more of a workshop or workforce development program. This program offers student interns the opportunity to gain professional experience and explore a variety of real life applications of cybersecurity while giving them hands-on experience.
Dr. Tom Edelberg
Originally started by Tom Davis, Edelberg explained that the immersive six-week program allows students to gain not only the necessary skills to further their careers in cybersecurity, but provides them a wonderful network and community as well.
“It’s really awesome to see the students come together,” Edelberg said. “When we picked them up from the airport, they were kind of shy, but by the end of the in-person part of the program they had their own in-jokes and had rented a boat to take out on Lake Monroe on the Fourth of July.”
The students also highlighted the comradery they experienced during their time both as members of the OmniSOC internship program and at IU.
When asked about what they learned about cybersecurity during their time, the students reiterated the importance of simple things like being aware of phishing scams and enabling two-step authentication on your devices.
“If you’re a student and you get a phishing email,” they said. “It’s easy to forget that when they target you, they’re also targeting the university and everyone you’ve been in contact with.”
Additionally, the OmniSOC internship is sponsored by the Elastic for students and educators program and has been since its inception in 2018. With a belief in providing students with the skills and knowledge they need to succeed in the real world, Elastic views this program as an opportunity to help shape the leaders of tomorrow by providing hands-on training with the Elastic Education Team and access to Elastic products, empowering students to explore on their own. During their training, students are exposed to the building blocks of Elastic Security.
Moving from an introduction to Zeek, to learning about Kibana for operators and concluding with an interactive capture the flag activity. Students are provided the tools needed to build a solid foundation of understanding and a place from which they can grow and experiment.
“The IU OmniSOC summer internship program provides us with a unique opportunity to introduce students to Elastic Security and provide them with the support they need to learn how to use our products,” said Stephanie Raiguel, program manager of Elastic for students and educators. “Elastic believes in the power of education and our support of this program is just one small way we can help support the leaders of tomorrow.”
For more information on the OmniSOC internship, please visit the website.
