A story from the life of an intern
As part of my degree in “Secure Information Systems”, I completed a compulsory work placement. Choosing an internship employer poses the question for students who get to know so many different areas of a sector in such a short space of time: “What do I really want to do?”
Limes Security has turned out to be an Eldorado for budding security experts thanks to its multifaceted nature. During my internship, I was involved in a wide variety of projects and was quickly able to find out where my strengths and weaknesses lie. Above all, I realized that it is precisely this variety of projects that makes our job so exciting. Be it the internal projects, some of which you would even call gimmicks in private, extensive risk assessments that combine management and technology or penetration tests at customer sites in environments that security experts can often only dream of.
My personal highlight was the opportunity to take part in a study at De Montfort University in the field of “Agile Incident Response for Industrial Control Systems” (AIR4ICS). For me, this was a business trip which, on the one hand, involved a steep learning curve in the area of red/blue teaming, but on the other hand also showed me how much value is placed on providing a student with an exciting internship.
An exciting working environment alone does not make a good internship or a great workplace. For me personally, the way I interact with my colleagues plays a big role in how much I enjoy going to work and tackling my day-to-day tasks. Here, too, I was not disappointed in any way. From day one, I was seen as an integral part of the team and treated as if we had known each other forever. To come back to my personal strengths and weaknesses: this is where you can see how working together can work. After just a short time, I was asked for my expertise on projects and any security issues that we were dealing with internally. On the other hand, I could always rely on being helped with topics where I lacked the background or where my skillset was not yet sufficiently honed.
More than a year has passed since my first day at work and looking back, I can only say that I am glad I overcame my fear of my first job in IT/OT security and took on the challenge of proving my skills in what was still a small company at the time, where everyone’s work contributes to success and failure.
In conclusion, there are only two things I would like to say:
- A big thank you to Peter and Thomas, who made this internship and the great experiences possible for me and
- to all those who are considering applying for a job with us: Go for it – Operational Technology is not rocket science!
David Schauer
