This year, Tenable’s 2016 Internship Program hosted 26 interns in 8 departments for 9 weeks. During this program, interns gained hands-on professional experience, networking opportunities, and valuable mentoring relationships. In addition, Tenable treated our interns to lunch-and-learns, bowling, Star Trek movie night, and an Oriole’s game.
Ethan joined Tenable as a Security Research Intern on our SecurityCenter™ team. He is a rising senior, majoring in Computer Engineering at University of Maryland.
Ethan sat down with us at the end of the program to discuss his intern experience and achievements.
Tenable: Why did you choose to intern at Tenable?
Ethan: Last summer, I was exposed to the field of security for the first time through an internship at a software engineering company in Virginia. I really enjoyed the work I did and what I was learning about the security field, but I soon realized that security was not the company’s main priority. I wanted to come to a company that was well known in the security field and I had heard about Tenable (and of course Nessus®) during my internship and proceeded to do more research on the company. The more I learned about Tenable’s accomplishments and its culture, I knew that Tenable was where I needed to be next. I was fortunate enough to meet with representatives of the company at my University’s career fair, and the rest is history.
Tenable: What was your favorite project you worked on this summer?
Ethan: I had the pleasure of working with the SecurityCenter Research team this summer. I was given the task of setting up an account in the team's SecurityCenter environment to gather data on the entire Tenable Lab. I really enjoyed working on this project as it enabled me to get familiar with SecurityCenter’s finer details and take advantage of all of its sophisticated tools. I also got the chance to interact with the SecurityCenter API through various scripts I wrote to assist me in my tasks.
Tenable: What did you like about Tenable’s company culture?
Ethan: The moment I received an invitation to go to a company sponsored hackathon in Florida, I knew this was the kind of culture I wanted at my workplace. My opinion was further validated after I went on the Space Mountain roller coaster with Ron Gula at Disney World. The idea that I, a lowly intern, was invited to such an event and was able to interact with C-level people at the company was astounding. I never imagined that I would experience such a culture at any company I would work at. The close connections between coworkers, regardless of their position in the company hierarchy, truly made me feel comfortable working at Tenable.
Tenable: What lessons and experiences did you get out of this internship?
Ethan: My manager, Cody Dumont, always did a daily review with me at the end of the workday. In those reviews, he would grill me on the smallest technical details that were crucial to understanding how a computer network works and how to protect one. It made me realize that as much as I thought I knew – as much as I had learned in school – there was still so much I had yet to learn. And every time I received a task that left me stumped, the rest of my teammates were there to help me overcome any of the obstacles I faced. While going about my work at Tenable, conducting these reviews with Cody, and consulting with my teammates, I learned more than I ever imagined I would in such a short period of time. The fact that my manager and teammates all took time out of their day to mentor and assist me is something I cannot thank them enough for.
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