~!# whoami

I’m a final year student undertaking a Bachelor of Science in IT. Alongside my studies, I work full-time as a Security Engineer for a small cloud company, and I also volunteer 12 hours a week for 2 non-for-profit organisations, one namely the Cyber Security Society at UTS and the other, Educating The Future. Balancing these responsibilities can be difficult, however it challenges me to grow both personally and professionally.

Before I dove into the full-time role of a Security Engineer, I was working as an intern at the same company for over 18 months. As an intern in the cyber security department, all my learnings were amalgamated into some major achievements: presenting the security of the company’s platform to a group of 50 people at one of the largest telecommunication companies in Australia which led to a successful deal. I represented our security team at the company’s largest customer event, Knowledge18 in Las Vegas, consulting with hundreds of our customers and fostered strong relationships by briefing the customers on the capability of the security of our platform. During my internship, I attended one of the biggest security conferences in the world: BlackHat Asia 2018 with my security team, where I learned about binary exploitation and Windows privilege escalation techniques used in the industry today.

This internship fostered my inquisitive nature to constantly be curious about the various security roles currently offered in the security industry. I am further developing my skills under the leadership of my team members and mentors to cement my path for my career. I want to remain in security and it was through this role that I realised my passion for the industry.

It was through my work experience where I discovered the need to bridge the gap between industry and tertiary education. Primarily, I discovered this through my executive role with UTS Cyber Security Society, when I would meet with external stakeholders representing successful corporate businesses who were looking for industry experience that was not aligned with the subjects we were learning at university. My experiences taught me to value the development opportunities I had, and I endeavoured to provide the same opportunities to students of UTS. In order to transfer this knowledge into action, I’ve set up meetings with my work colleagues from the beginning to paint a landscape of the industry’s current benchmark of work, and what professionals are looking for in their potential colleagues. Additionally, I’ve began secondary research, to understand the development in the demands of certain skillsets from future security professionals, and what skills students need to be developing in order to reach these milestones.

| Giving a security lecture for first-year UTS Students in Building 8 |