From Questions to Confidence: Our CyberFirst Summer Students
There are plenty of ways to measure the success of a cybersecurity summer placement. The quality of the work matters, of course. But sometimes the most interesting change is in the person doing it.
This week, our CyberFirst summer students completed their time with 2T Security by presenting their projects to the team.
And they weren’t easy subjects.
Monty took us through his work exploring secure Single Sign-On, looking at the challenge of making access simpler for users without compromising security.
Alice talked about something that will be familiar to anyone who has worked on a real technology project: scoping. Her project explored what happens when the apparently straightforward meets real-world requirements, changing assumptions and the inevitable hurdles that emerge along the way.
And Bryony, a Maths student, took us into the rapidly changing world of quantum cryptography; an area where the speed of technological development makes understanding what might happen next particularly challenging.
But there was another story behind Bryony’s presentation.
“Do I belong in cyber?”
We first met Bryony at a CyberFirst careers event.
She was interested in cybersecurity, but wasn’t sure whether a cybersecurity company would be interested in her. She was studying Maths rather than Computer Science and hadn’t done much coding.
We had a good conversation about something we think is important:
Cybersecurity needs far more than coders.
It needs mathematicians. Researchers. Engineers. Architects. Analysts. Risk specialists. Communicators. People who can take complicated problems apart, ask good questions and approach them in different ways.
Some time later, Bryony spotted an event 2T was hosting.
She came along.
And she came armed with more questions.
Fast-forward to the end of her summer placement, and she was standing in front of a room full of experienced security professionals, confidently taking them through her research into quantum cryptography.
The room was engrossed.
The difference between the student who had initially wondered whether there was a place for her in cybersecurity and the person holding that room was remarkable.
Give people real problems
Our CyberFirst placements aren’t about inventing something to keep a student occupied for a few weeks.
We want students to experience some of the ambiguity that comes with real technical work.
That means researching unfamiliar subjects. Working out what the actual problem is. Discovering that the original scope doesn’t quite work. Asking people for help. Changing direction. Defending decisions. And, ultimately, explaining what they’ve learned to people who know the subject.
Because technical knowledge matters.
But so do curiosity, resilience, communication and the confidence to say: “I don’t know yet, but I know how I’m going to find out.”
Monty, Alice and Bryony demonstrated all of those things.
We’re incredibly proud of what they achieved this summer, and we’re looking forward to seeing where they go next.
