Current Year 12 student Ben Cook was lucky enough to complete work experience with ASD during the last holidays. He shares his experience!

Where did you complete your work experience?
I completed my work experience at the Australian Crime Security Centre.

What tasks did you undertake during this work experience?
During this work experience, I got to complete a variety of hands-on tasks, such as identifying security intrusions on a computer system, conducting digital forensic examinations, learning about web application vulnerabilities, using open-source software to recover keys and encrypt and decrypt data, learning about geospatial analysis, and robotics programming using Arduinos.

What did you learn by completing this work experience?
From completing this work experience, I learned what it was like to work through a cyber security incident, similar to those that real cyber security specialists go through each day. I also got to learn many of the individual steps that go into preventing cyber threats, as well as how to identify any vulnerabilities online.

What were the challenging aspects of this work experience?
There were many challenging aspects of this work experience, especially because most of the tasks were new to me. In particular, the digital forensic examinations contained many things that were difficult to understand, such as learning how to examine hard drives for any cyber attacks and then using various techniques for analysis. Additionally, one minor challenge I faced was having to adjust between various operating systems like Windows and Linux.

Has this shaped your ideas for future careers/jobs?
This work experience has been very valuable for me. I have always had an interest in cyber security and this work experience gave me the opportunity to gain insight into the many tasks that cyber security specialists undergo daily. Additionally, there are many roles that go into cyber security, which I got to experience in depth and see if I enjoyed it. I am now more keen in learning about cyber security and possibly having a future career in the cyber security industry.