North Carolina officials continue efforts to build the state cybersecurity workforce through its internship partnership between the Department of Information Technology (NCDIT) and the Carolina Cyber Network.
This week, NCDIT highlighted the work of two interns within the department’s Enterprise Security and Risk Management Office, where they are being trained to identify and mitigate potential cybersecurity threats, according to a news release. The students are part of a larger-scale program with multiple cohorts, HR support, visible recruitment and dedicated funding.
Cybersecurity interns work alongside the state’s cyber workforce, with Carolina Cyber Network supporting that budget, NCDIT HR manager John Alexander told Government Technology last fall. The partnership was announced in July.
Intern Jennifer Medina, a Wake Technical Community College graduate, was highlighted by NCDIT for recently flagging a suspicious email containing a malicious URL, initiating a systemwide purge, and blocking the URL, the news release said. Of note, email scams account for a major portion of cyber attacks and have been greatly enhanced with theuse of AI.
Fayetteville Technical Community College student and Army veteran Jacob Wright “detected an attempted account compromise before automated alerts were triggered and quickly escalated the issue so his team could isolate and disable the threat,” the release said. Both Wright and Medina are pursuing cybersecurity careers and are supervised by Albert Moore, an IT security and compliance manager at NCDIT.
“There are lots of places to fit in cybersecurity, and I believe it’s a strong career choice,” he said in the release. “Public service is a calling. The reward is knowing the data you’re protecting is your data, your family’s information and the systems people rely on every day.”
