Cybersecurity Analyst at Draper

Just finished my first co-op experience: 7 months at Draper Labs as a Cybersecurity Analyst working in the SOC.

Draper Labs is a non-profit research and development organization. This was my first time having a real adult job, and I learned a lot about how I want to move forward in the field, and about myself. I triaged daily alerts from Splunk, Carbon Black, and Proofpoint, which improved my skills in threat analysis, vulnerability management, and incident response. Every day, I resolved tickets for various requests, like specific software installation or VPN exceptions. Every week, I updated and deployed new firewall rules. I helped in efforts to identify insider threats performing sensitive data exfiltration, and deploying a new policy to disallow any unauthorized USB device connections. I was also given tasks directly from the CISO, mostly non-technical ones like writing a report on an emerging threat or summarizing new compliance documentation, but it was exciting to feel so involved.

However, I realized the implementation of cybersecurity in a corporate setting is sometimes different than what I’ve learned in the classroom or in textbooks, often because of financial, administrative, or compliance restraints that make progress difficult. In my role, which was mostly about maintenance rather than improvement, I was struggling to find the work satisfying. Hours spent on false positive alerts, and there was no tangible result; no sense of progress that I find fulfilling.

I realized how much I missed programming and building real solutions for an end product, and thankfully my manager understood and gave me several coding projects. I did a lot of work with Tenable’s API to automate vulnerability scanning and parse results, and built a database of network enclave information with a corresponding user-friendly front-end. I enjoyed this work much more. It felt creative and purposeful, as I was actively making security operations more efficient and resilient. Before my co-op, all domains of cybersecurity seemed interesting, but now I was able to narrow my interests to the intersection of cybersecurity and coding, preferably with a strong focus in automation.

Although I realized being an analyst is not for me, I am so grateful towards the CISO, my manager, and the team for all their guidance and support in this experience. In my last conversation with the CISO, I thanked him, told him I hope we cross paths again, and teased that maybe it’ll be when I’m a CISO too. There’s a long way to go…