Get an Internship - Panel

oh I start yourself she's starting her last time hi I'm Paula we know with Broadway National Bank right here in San Antonio were warned made right here in San Antonio 1941 tell you quickly about our Bay Oh actually though we're gonna introduce the speakers first let's introduce Michael Davis carrier information systems and the systems engineers studying Montiel network security officer CISSP on the CISSP and network security engineer I take care of all the security equipment there and at the bank my name is Bob Widow I'm also on the organizing committee for b-sides and so thrilled it's turned out as well it is and y'all are really making this a great event also we have I'm student

Emily she's one of our previous interns a college student at UTSA and she interned for us for ten weeks she'll be talking about that our current interns well sort of current bed actually did a three week internship with us in the middle of a Christmas season and then now he's doing a full 10-week internship with us right now think and finally Adrian Clayton and he's first-time intern here with the bank and open the pod Academy graduate so with a focus on cybersecurity so really quickly if that our bank it was formed right here in 1941 in San Antonio by a guy there was a colonel at Fort Sam and he was like hey all the banks are in downtown San

Antonio by the way back in 1941 there was like this gap of land between Alamo Heights in downtown they or not and so you'd have to go there to go to the bank so he wanted to start a bank and he so he figured out how to do it by literally reading books got it completely set up with sixty thousand dollars in funding is and that's what you did to start a bank in 1941 you file paperwork he was a lawyer and a judge Advocate General of jag officer and the army it's a family Hill Bank privately held all the stock is in about 20 people's names and they're almost all had the same last name Cheever when I started

with the bank we had 750 million dollars in debate that was 1998 now we have 3.3 billion dollars in the bank two billion in wealth management assets and over a billion in brokerage assets thirty-six branches mainly in the Austin San Antonio area but we got to Seguin Castroville Hondo Kerrville Fredericksburg and so we have about six hundred and thirty employees and about thirty IT staff that includes everyone from the administrative assistant to the chief technology officer so you talk about the intern program in thirty-one years ago and I've been there for about three years I worked in two different cells on Forex trying to fall at I'm just talking to him knowing of years of

a mentor and mine and on the same way I mean anybody you want to come up talk to me I could show them anything they want to know if they were interested in whatever sit down talk about to draw it out and so when I got got the privilege to being hired by Broadway Bank I started talking to Paul Sonny said hey we've got a great staff a great atmosphere to really the mentor and help the local community help college kids help people who are transitioning from different jobs or restarting their jobs career and help help them get in so about about a year later and fast for my brother Alwyn throw CA he was a

baker's entire line 32 years old has been a baker gets his CCNA walks out can you get an interview and I'm like what can I do to help them and I help them give some routers and switches and we sat down and he actually started doing a little to start work and then finally got full on its spectrum methanol so he's been there for a year and a half ganas are gonna thread in three times so with that I want to brand miss it we really need to be able to help people like my brother in law or help UTS State students and I got permission from an executive sponsor they said sure you know draw out what you're looking to do

what you're trying to accomplish I said they don't send in Paul we we started mapping out a program for the interns and like Paul alluded to Ben's aunt came to us and say hey he just finished his a winter session and he's got three weeks he let to come and learn something we're like perfect opportunity we're starting this program we need and I would like somebody to kind of figure out how this works he's in here for three weeks brought him in started working with him saw some things we had a change in our program and during the process we met with UTSA and we met with the Rackspace's up on cloud Academy to understand what do they see

other companies do friendships and UTSA kind of gave us the 10-week program they said most companies that they do in French do a 10-week program some students can actually use up the class credit so we'll say great we will mimic exactly what it would help you say a student out here so we started we went to management they've gotta prove me we started the interview process and we hired an Emily from UTSA and another gentleman his name is Marcus from OCA they came in 10 and a half week program they learned everything from VMware to Cisco switching 2 weeks are doing a Windows 10 implementation they got to see a whole gaming guy and not work there just assignments that

we're in IT security they work with our application specialists I really know just banking applications I got the top with the developers they got the talk they sat down with the helpdesk so they can understand from the bottom up if you're just gonna walk in that to you you might have to start at the help desk see what the hardware team part of our team is our izing face of the face of the anti department they're the ones who put the PCs and fix the printers we like go spend some time with them as well and after all that you know Emily markets kind of kind of saw exactly you know different possibilities and they started

kind of gravitating to the ones that make sense to them we gave them real work we didn't make up a lab we didn't we didn't gave them just Excel spreadsheets we actually had them put hands on getting a Cisco CLI during the day during the live environment so it's some really good instruction a really good understanding and really stern warnings hey you shut down that pork you're going to that Bank you're may not be able make that transaction we could lose a million dollars and we never luckily never had any problems yeah the other thing is ours that's point yeah so the program was designed for 20 hours a week for 10 weeks like I

said 8 to 12 because I have a full 16 yard week job that I had to get in there with the other 20 hours a week but we also didn't want to just show them a 8 to 12 so you know the very second week they were there we had a VMware upgrade we came in they came in about 3 o'clock in the afternoon they left about 10 o'clock that night job wasn't done I stayed till 8 o'clock the next morning to finish the job but they got to see hey it's Saturday work it's after hours work its before hours work you know they got to see the whole game of IT these are some of the things that they were

tasked with they worked with Cisco ice if you know what that is its identity services engine its torque control access network access control yeah I love him more than that yeah so they have to work with that they did the investigation of Steel on accounts hey girl look at this count we've got this sim tell me last time this count walked in and trace it back and then you know we started putting those accounts on a dead state and then we eventually the security team believed those accounts they were familiar with Windows 10 that they were became alongside support the next day they were able staff augment our regular staff and go Aldon how people get the printer set up show them

around with his 10 we were in the middle of changing VLANs to get on a typical scheme set of this all over the place scheme and I showed them from stem to stern hey this this print has a Cypress we're going to change it in stand-ins VLAN so you have to go to DHCP you have to go into the switch and change its appeal and you got to go into the print server now teleport so they have to see the whole thing about printers on the other and we stayed one night knocked about 60 printers out and that was a that was a really good educational foundation for them again they've done the first interns got to do upgrade

VMware the second turn interns two weekends ago we just updated anymore so we stayed forget seven hours and updated all 32 hosts my environment brought there six five foot up to the current specs the last patch came out in February and they were they were part of they were sitting right next to assistant administrator and checking their work and helping them get through it but not only do we give them tasks and stuff to give them knowledge and because there's some school stuff I could probably give them to you but they sit down with my GBA they're doing the two now they're gonna sit out the DBAs and they're shown single worker that's my extreme finisher and then show them

how to exchange words there's an IT security team and doing against it in response and look at the different security software we do so it's not just tax return it's also knowledge driven so they can actually put things I got into fire I and I was able to remediate the system it's to me it's more valuable to give them real life day to day work than just attached students and it's all spreadsheets and go do some comparisons and tell me based on the list sorry so uh what are the things I'd add to that is a lot of times we're we're not looking for some an intern that's going to have everything on their resume

they're not going to have a lot of stuff for hands-on and actually doing the work depending on how long they've been on a particular path or a course in their education they might not have too much hands-on technology at all which is okay we need the ability for an intern to learn and adapt because they're going to be doing in a 10-week course or basically or run through four through our department a vast amount of different systems so they have to be very flexible on on how they can quickly learn and pick out the task and that makes a difference it really does and a lot of times when you're when you're doing things whether it's openside

academy or your own or just book learning and stuff okay you-you-you know the thing that you're trying to do but if you have to have the confidence to be able to do that thing and hopefully some mentors and guide you stick to get that work done we want to make sure that when they're done they can actually not just oh I did this because some lesson in some book told me to do it it's like oh I did this in some lesson in some book because it makes a difference in this particular function or thing that you would do to secure a network or take care of a networker build a switch or work on a VLAN or whatever kind of a

kind of a broad spectrum of stuff but we wanted to make sure that the interns well were busy and understood what was going on plus they had extensive tours of knowledge of different areas and stuff you why do we have generators what do they do how the things connected what does the switch look like that switches the power from CBS power to the generator and what would that do you know things like that make a difference because it's hard to visualize a switch that can switch thousand amps of 480 volts you know on three legs you know unless you've literally stood next to it now we didn't switch it yeah that's really neat that sounds like a shotgun going off

when it flips but but those are the kind of things that make hopefully a better idea when later on in their career if they're doing something like cybersecurity and they have to come up with a power grid for something that make it resilient what are these pieces of equipment even look like I mean that's that's hard to say that oh look there's a photograph of something or even a picture it's different when you're standing next to it and you know that hey you see that big chunk of blade that's about the size of your hand that thing flies this far in about two cycles or of a 60 cycle a 30th of a second it flips pretty

impressive sunny I'll ask that to Michael brings out a good point about the knowledge transfer I mean we while audible with the interns do or TAS drove and I think it's important also to share that as a financial institution we're federally regulated so we like to also introduce them to the risk and compliance aspects of what we do within the bank we're audited frequently regularly throughout any every entire year throughout every year we perform penetration tests we have independent auditors they come in and look at our world and they evaluate them and they shed light on what we're doing well and they settle out in areas that we can approve we want to expose them to that I

think Michael's done a great job also of exposed to them to meetings such as change control change control is very important to to them to the maturity models of an organization that you're demonstrating that you are not things you know knee-jerk you have a very very organized plan in making changes but part of making those changes are going to test and you're going to ensure that there was no unfavorable outcomes and they've to go ahead and push it to production so there's those additional aspects that we're exposing the interns to I think any internship is important for students that are coming out of college or an organization like open cloud Academy some larger institutions you might be doing just a

few you may just be turning one wrench of the security team well we take a lot of pride in and the size of organization we're able to afford a lot of opportunities to the interns where they're exposed to a lot and I think they and the other thing too is we seek their feedback Michael's also included that in the program as well though before they leave we want to get it give us your feedback and tell us what we did well and tell us what would you like to see if more up more of and so that that's it that's going to be that's gonna make our internship program grow much deeper and much stronger and

provide the skills and the exposure to the interns to make them very effective and just major contributors to to their careers so I think that I'll just want to just expose you know bring up those aspects to what we do in the internship program and and Michael also brought out I mean from a security angle we show them our tools we show them what we do Incident Response quick note is um like you know we kind of push PowerShell and trying to do more automation of things we've got a couple of people that are pretty good at it in their crew and so they started making scripts that they were giving the interns to go ahead and

use to remediate certain third-party applications that we can do remotely so these these scripts would kick that off remotely and then they'd have to go and check the debt actually work properly and then when they do that they use our vulnerability scanner digital defense and procreate it just happen happen we have Larry napp Otto here who's the the man at digital defense here in the room and it also gives a good idea that the software that you all use his company makes and y'all get to experience that it's a simple interface it's simple to understand and simple to scan something so when you all get through doing something you have the ability to go out and scan that device

to make sure that it's good again ya do validate your work because when that comes back with a good score you know that you're done that's the same kind of deal and you get the same kind of gratification that we get all the time when we're doing that same kind of action because it sort of like when I used to do construction and at the end of the day I could see what I did that I made a difference in that that structure it's there's more boards up there or it's finished or it's painted or whatever and it's harder to get in a field such as IT at times unless you're like racking and stacking because then

you can go look I racked it stacked that but so but then again we have them in the data center as well but but go ahead I'd like to hear from some of the interns and stuff let's start with Emily yeah Emily was so you've done the entire ten weeks with us and stuff so I'd like to hear your idea on all this stuff so I started in January and right now I'm taking some summer classes but I'll be a senior at UTSA doing a double major with cybersecurity and information systems and I didn't know much about computers looks like aside from what I'm learning in the classroom and I kind of stumbled upon the internship through UTSA I was

just at home bored and I got a message that said hey Broadway thanks looking for UTSA interns and I had nothing else to do so I was like might as well send in the resume and then it got an interview and then I got accepted into the internship which was surprising to me because I didn't really know what I was doing and in terms of like why I chose my major and stuff I'm interested more in the federal aspect of it maybe becoming like coming as teh or working like an FBI or something but it was interesting to kind of see more from a basic IT standpoint other things that I could do in terms of working at the help

desk or even hardware I thought that was really interesting because at the beginning we got to or I got to the nitrogen I don't know what they're doing but we changed memory sticks so we gave some of the older PC models more memory which is a really simple task I mean just unpin it and put the new sticks in and then you're all good to go but it was really interesting because I had never opened the back of a PC before so keith was really good about kind of showing us in different plants and even in the very last week of the internship I kind of hooked up with him and was like hey I'm kind of interested what you

do in terms of hardware because I don't know much about that and it was kind of cool to see the different aspects and they have a really small IT team I'm small but efficient and so it was easy to kind of go be able to go to every one and then their individual like expertise and kind of sit down with them and see what they do day to day but I think it's important for most of us are here because we like one internship but for anybody who like works for a business or anything to kind of partner with your schools and you organizations like out in the like academic world too because when you

graduate you know you're so used to going to class five times a week working part-time at McDonald's or whatever you don't really have time to kind of seek those opportunities so I think it's really important for you know businesses like banks and different organizations to kind of partner with different you know schools and stuff like that to get those opportunities can now I have a better idea of you know the entirety of IT and a bunch of different things that I could do like anyoneís and she said she surprised she was chosen huh of course I chose her so I'm definitely not surprised and I think some people were even even if that survey they think they

were concern of you and trying to apply for the internship looking at some of the tests that we're putting out in front of them we weren't looking for anybody who was a CCNA or who had been an active directory minute or VMware you know we were looking for somebody who had a want and a thirst and had that patient and so in the interviews yeah we we literally through memory chips at people say tell me what this is and eighty percent of them couldn't tell you what it was and you know that was a marker because they didn't know it was just are they observant I mean one of the guys said I really don't know but it

says 4gb REM yes it's a four gig ram stick you know so he get was observant so they actually told me they could probably move their way around and figure things out and said they're just like I don't know what it is and put it down and go over here and that's really important especially as a system integrator in troubleshooting that's what I was looking for somebody you can troubleshoot some of you can work through a problem whether they ever seen it before or if they've seen it a hundred times I said you know we I throw out crazy question to the interns if if you had to wait a plane but you couldn't lift it how would

you weigh the plane how would you show me the weight of a plane and you know a lot of them kind of stumble and think about it and you know so come right out with an answer is there a right answer I'll tell you there is you know the wrong answer is I don't know and we got that from a couple people one right there because you're not willing to try you're not a little critical thinking yeah you know that critical thank you that's definitely a mark against you but I would encourage critical thinking question whether you're not only a wrong answer what kind of plane is a fuel so that's what I'm looking for you know

that's a decent answer - yeah critical thing you're thinking through the problem I have you just said I don't know you know I spent literally three seconds on sat on it you know I did have one in this past when it came down to being a decision between Ben and suddenly she really thought about it and she took five minutes it I don't know but you could tell how'd you ask him questions she's really really running on it you're trying to figure it out and so we stopped the whole interview process it did you want to try that answer again it's just like a guy's like sure so she's like I really don't know nothing

that's okay you know you know so we started talking through and she's at the entities like I try one more time like sure so she's going to try she want to keep working through the problem right yeah not giving up and so she threw something down oh my god okay she's like well what's the right answer I said the thing is to say I don't know as a wrong answer yeah and then she told us that she interviewed American Express and they said they drew a clock at 3 o'clock and I said can you tell me what the space is and she said she took 10 minutes in the interviewer finally stopped and said look you're thinking too literal you're

trying to give me an exact what that portion is just tell me it's a quarter because it's a quarter of an hour I mean you know this is just a mouth it's like so you just calm down yes I think to Michael's point I think the interview process and y'all can speak to yourself that that's another experience for the interns some of them never have been through an interview process others have but I think it's a it's an avenue it's a channel where they can continue to sharpen their skills or communication skills what employers are looking for and so I think that was probably yeah we actually you know do our best to try and really look for the critical

thinking skills I mean both Sonny and I have two CISSP and that test really had a lot to do the security but it's a lot to do with critical thinking the way that they put questions there and stuff you have to literally pick between two or three correct answers to find the one that's most correct or whatever your the scenario is that you're got in front of you and in the end that's that's the kind of person that generally exceeds or excels at IT in different fields you know one of the things that put your best foot forward to try and get an internship is to go out and volunteer in any capacity whatsoever I would like to

see more people to have on there that there are Cypress Patriot volunteers because regardless of you're in high school or junior or college or whatever if you're out in the field you can help those children do that work at the high school and junior high school levels it's amazing the the little bit of support that you can provide that will help them do better at in down the road when it comes to cyber patriot and also help build the work force here in San Antonio and throughout the nation but but we have to hear from work you know so absolutely this spring and so when I first came on to Broadway I didn't really know a lot I had like a

background in like working with computers building I'm taking apart hardware and like some basic development skills you know messing with some programming languages and stuff and I just have reached out to them and said hey I'm looking for whatever kind of experience I can get which I feel from what I've seen talking to people is a lot of people like oh I don't have what this company wants or I don't think I know enough about you know this specific thing to go get an internship which I think and they kind of spoke to it what they're looking for is someone who you know is doing this stuff on their own who's trying to learn and is you know

messing around with things at home and doing just whatever they really can to get their foot in the door because I mean I am know by no means an IT master I'm sure a lot of us are and that's the thing you have to remember with an internship but they're not looking for someone to come in and just roll on a desk and say alright see you know I like three o'clock or whatever the experience is there to take someone who maybe doesn't have that knowledge and to teach them and give them that knowledge so that they can you know later apply that which is one of the things for me which really set Broadway apart because I you

know was going around looking for interview I had talked to USAA Rackspace knew starting a lot of people around town but the thing that made it different for Broadway and why to come back was I felt the main focus of the program was learning so the other places it felt like yes you would get experience you will learn some stuff but for a good part of the time you'd be doing just you know some kind of task maybe something that you know like oh let's give it to the interns or let's give them this spreadsheet whereas working at Broadway it's a constant hey come here let me show you this or hey we've got a meeting you know come sit

and change controller comes to this meeting with Cisco you're constantly getting that hands-on with the idea that hey we're here to learn rather than just knock out some boring monotonous tasks that we don't want to do and the reason I enjoyed that so much the first time I want to come back was because not only is that great like professional experience in the sense that if I go to that next interview after I graduate for a job and you know they ask me about you know a certain thing I can say well not only do I know what that is I've had like some basic experience with that it's also a classroom experience so going back to class

my teachers you know would be talking to about certain things and some kids would know some kids wouldn't they be kind of looking around scratching their head to be like well I can you know I could talk about that for 15-20 minutes you know I've already I've already seen the concept I've worked hands-on with it I've you know been introduced to it which was the main draw for me was just everybody's like so welcoming and so ready to teach no matter what they're like in the middle of it can be really hectic like we've had stuff going down Michaels you know been here to 2:00 a.m. the past like three four nights and you know you

say hey you show me this he's still more than happy to stop what he's doing no matter what's on fire that we need to put out or you know what he's got going on his day and he's always there and so does everybody else to just kind of sit and mentor and take that time so when you come out of the internship at the end you're better off than when you started I like to add to that you were very putting on the pointiest made I was sitting these two gentlemen I ever sit with me this week on Thursday and we have an agenda and about 10 minutes into our agenda a fire erupted and so we

didn't get to spend too much time on what we're planning to do but they saw another Avenue they saw the entirely different aspect of what we were doing with dents in a response what the team was doing to troubleshoot and eventually remediate the issue so they were appreciative of that and I said sorry guys you know I think no no no this is good I'm Adrian Clayton from OCA just recently got my Security+ so I'm on a different spectrum from there I'm a little older I'm 37 I've been working in IT with spraying of work that's a PC hardware technician here for a few years and so I got the opportunity to actually go to school because I got sick with

cancer so I got a grant to be able to go to OCA finish up that's when I met Michael and Sonny and when they were up there talking about the program it really interests me it was still intimidating right because you always think that okay I got to know this this and this before I even go to the interview but when they were up there talking it Dave made it feel so welcoming dad I was like okay well I'll go ahead and apply so when I got the opportunity to go in went to the interview was like hey five panel I was so caught off guard I did not realize it's gonna be that many people an

interview but they made it feel so comfortable it was like no pressure and they did ask the questions they want to get a sense of your knowledge if you understand when they're talking but you don't really have to break it down to a teeth which when I compared to other interviews that I went I'm not gonna mention any names but I went in an interview and it felt like they were trying to make me fail in the interview so I was like okay well do you know I I P said do you know what port it runs on and then if I didn't know those things it's like they took me out of the running it was really stressful whereas

I'm in a five panel interview with these guys and everybody is wanting to check they were teaching me while I was in the interview like as long as I was asking questions and I was being interactive with them that they were willing to talk to me and that's the feel that I got ultimately I'm glad they chose me but I was really like after I interviewed with them I didn't interview anywhere else not supposed to do that I would just like really want it to be with this team because everyone that I have everybody in the Department of all the different departments that I've worked with everybody is willing to sit down with you and teach you and explain the steps

in the process they're not gonna sit and say do you know what this is and make you answer it they literally just explained it to you so a lot of the things in the internship is is really helpful because they go literally from hardware they actually broke out a memory stick and was just like do you know what this is and I've worked with hardware for so long I knew right away but it's just kind of weird that if you can explain different protocols and then you can't identify a hard drive it's like but I was able to identify it so they actually during the internship that's what they do they take you in they show you all the

way from hardware all the way up to security all the way up to they even are going to introduce us to the marketing team all aspects of the job and for me being an intern for so long I've worked with sprayed as a technical consultant pretty much just fixing phones right building computers we all know how to do that but diving into this industry is very intimidating and what I feel like if you're in my position you want to look for someone that's willing to teach you willing to take you under the wing and bring you along as long as you're doing your due diligence to go out and not just study because you're at work but to

actually do it when you're not at work because they're actually interested in it and you find that person who's gonna bring you along that's what you look for in this industry and honestly being here at this an event talking to other IT security professionals if you show interest it seems like everyone is willing to teach right it's like a little tight crew if you can get in the door they're gonna bring you along as long as you do what you're supposed to do and learn the knowledge as well on your own time as well as on the clock so it's been an awesome experience we're only four weeks into it I look forward we have all they don't

really babysit you they they treat you almost like your actual employee we have the mornings and go in at nine o'clock there's a morning meeting everybody talks about their job that they have to do specifically and then we are assigned jobs and it's up to you to finish tasks they show us and then they're like go do your job as long as we're not sitting around twiddling our thumbs you know the internet they'd let us do what we're supposed to do if we have any questions that everyone is available I can just go walk up to them I can go on Outlook it set up a meeting with this person and go from there so

that's what I think is awesome it really prepares you for the hands-on because when you're going to school that's like what you fear the most is I understand it I know the concept of it but can I actually do it on a computer when they tell me to do it and this is what they're doing they're providing that for us and it's gonna make me a lot more comfortable when I go out into the real world and actually apply for a job that I can say hey yeah I know how to identify a port on a network or if you plug into a wall and you don't see no lighting there's no connection where to

go to find it on a switch recently did that and it seems like it's simple that you plug in it's like okay what do you do you mean what do you do restart the router No go to the switch get online if no the infrastructure of how they have it laid out you can pinpoint it that port and get on Cisco and do your command pros from there and turn on the poor to find out what VLAN is on and improve it so that is some stuff that some people might take for granted that expect you to know but how can you if you've never actually had someone teach you to do it it's it's it's awesome it's

awesome so if you ever have opportunity definitely with the Broadway there's such a tight-knit crew if there's they're a smaller IT team but they're super efficient and it's like impressive when I walked in and saw wow this is not really a big team and then the scope of how much they take care of these guys are on it like it's incredible so I say if you have opportunity to get into this program definitely apply it's I just want to say real quick on that note did you know Paul mentioned a lot about being involved here with b-sides and volunteering and that aspect you know the bank is very big we value community involvement tremendously and so I think

in a bigger picture and the bigger room kind of tied to what Paul just said about becoming involved with CyberPatriot becoming involved with b-sides I mean we're seeing cyber sitting to us a here right many of you know that we want to contribute to that effort and continue to grow our ecosystem continue to build the careers and help out with with so many different sectors of what the city is involved with so I think there's that an additional aspect and when you go back to the founders of the bank you know criminal Cheever and his wife you know when they were taking strolls down Alamo Heights I mean literally strolling downtown bikes they had a vision and you

know his wife was was a teacher and so that is that culture continues to permeate throughout the organization five generations later and so that's what we're here today we continue that legacy of what the founders believed in and and I also while it's fresh on my mind UTSA the Center for professional Student Development that is the office we touch base with to begin our program and Michael oh and one other thing graduate of UTSA 2012 lot in here he has a degree in infrastructure assurance and then of course did you know I don't have a degree trying to get someone that is on a degree plan and someone that is not on a degree plan possibly to work together

because there's different different mindsets different visions and stuff and they work really well together to you trying to mix those type of abilities and stuff yeah to go back the family is perfect right the families mentor you think the kids when they come up they're asked to come work at the bank not an executive level they're a sixth rally the bottom as a teller our as the person at you know the lowest level person had departments I mean the bank is mentor minded I just saw that and saw what these guys had you just said look let's push our way up and ask for this mentorship program yep I think at this time if anybody's got any questions

oh well what big thing okay my first job I was a sales assistant at a bar value-added reseller in 1993 in Corpus Christi Texas prior to that I did construction I was a contractor and carpenter finish carpenter did all the work and stuff like that so you know everybody's got their first job in IT solely what was your first job in IT by the way that's leap aartsen he's the president of Issa here in town we at Issa I'd like to have students in our and we have a student membership fee or amount that you so I recommend getting in as a student in the ISS April what is your son chapters and there you got doesn't have

a check for free and we meet quarterly at Maggiano's it's 15 bucks as a stupid deal like a bunch of Maggiano's and three tongs from yeah it's a pretty big industry folks we bring in so it's but first job I was I know your sales guy still had that for an assistance program I started a precise engineering and then to business school got an IT degree for the Business College and like cool Larry Larry gotta break it DBI cool here's what were you perspective job first IT job I was I was in hard work yes I was yeah break things so you got to start somewhere in this field takes time yeah that kind of reminded me to bring up a

point is also be like IT can be intimidating but it also covers a huge scope of things so be open to what you want to do because I'm in the cybersecurity program and I came in thinking cybers all I want to do like 100 percent it's locked but then coming to Broadway I got to sit with everybody got to sit with you know system engineers and system administrators telecommunications team you know database and so while yes I still do enjoy security that's opened me to like a whole new world and I've kind of tried to start learning about like system administration and system engineering because that stuff is something that's kind of pulled my interest and been really interesting to

me and it's something I never thought that I would really ever want to do until I started working with you know I tell the guy on that note to the interns you know IT technology security I mean it's it's vast and you know just tell them don't don't try to Boulder oh I mean absorb what you can learn the concepts if we teach you about technology you know insecurity sandboxing technology containment technologies things like that when incidents occur just just grasp the concepts and you can go always go back and do your research later but at least you're aware of these technologies and how the steps we take the performance in a response and then you can always go

back later but at least you're taking away this knowledge that you didn't have before these technologies that you're aware of now and then it also can help them you know their pathway on what they want to do down their careers

that's a great that's a good question I'm not sure that heard was initially for two sessions per year which we did the winner and now the summer but I'm starting to think that I might go to management ask for fall and that's a deal if you have a corporation out there that doesn't have currently an internship get one make one try and try and do something out there to help get one going if you'll have any questions about how we came up with this one don't hesitate and give us a touch base with us matter of fact we reached out to other people like Larry because he's been doing internships out of digital defense for years and years

my personal opinion is

Boyd

probably Bank is often a caduceus important that's our headquarters yes well of course we have 38 branches throughout South Texas yeah but were there so that's I've been asked that question back up other people as well that's what we initially started with is just to kind of just to get started I did want to go focus right I'm gonna be able to one with 200 applicants so let's be focused Sonny had a contact UTSA I had an in an dossier so we started there but I definitely think we're ready to start broad and broader than that focus and bring allowing open it up instead of just saying these schools are the these academies will never have ten because we

just don't have yet the staff or anything like that like digital defence does but you know to you know but indeed calm how you got the years of your school did you butter their internships or for here so I got the internship from from OCA they sent out the email and enforcement came to run came to all our class but I think that it's just doing the research and finding out find a company like snipe a company and start looking them up and see what kind of positions they have and then go after and see if they have the internship I think that like I said anybody could have plied it like you didn't it didn't

have to be that your tsa are some from oaken clouds but did you have someone to kind of came through they have some kind of knowledge of IT but yeah good deeds and monsters if you I find there you start looking at the companies that you're that you're interested in or industries or sorry my daughter's back there she just got her internship by asking her brother's girlfriend's mom who's in the industry that she's in they didn't have one that she need another company and said hey I have this personal friendship so just network that that's how Ben got got into this first time as well did you just start networking and using using the people that you know and

say Ben team doesn't he said we were told I just want to work I don't care if I get paid I'm really hey crazy but our CEO said no no we got a I don't do that so you know got paid and when the interns came along because he was a fish senator and he was kind of Winter Hill right you know I went to them and say hey it's me ten dollars an hour you know whatever you see said no fourteen dollars and hours and always paid an employee that we have and I'm not gonna go blow that so they got a range the first day they showed it Vince like this is great as well

get business cards beat people

yeah and Issa once again they have student programs as well when it comes to CyberPatriot just literally as hard as picking up the phone calling the nearest High School near you and going who does your computer teaching and then ask that person do you all have CyberPatriot if they say no well then you call another high school if they say yes go hey do you need any help and I guarantee you 100 times out of 100 you're gonna say yes do you need a mentor you can check that box but chances are unless you know someone you're not going to get it so the only two things you have to do is you sign up

for at US Cyber Patriot org and you you have to whatever school district you usually have some type of volunteer a paperwork and background check that you have to be able to pass to get that in there to become a volunteer for the school and you know whatever it's easy to do for us and then go in there and make a schedule and stick with it and go to we would visit our target feed routine after school on Mondays every week for an hour either one of us both of us if we could and I think to add to that regarding cyber patriot and again this is really related so a lot of what we're talking about here you know in

terms of internships we're with any ISD the northeast Independent School District and I think that one of the benefits that came out of that program our involvement with it is Paul and I and and I just thought herself but the students when we started to learn about the needs of our team it raised the attention of all the way to the superintendent and the superintendent and everyone else all of his team realized that you know what we can make some improvements here not just for the cyberpatriots before you kids better but really coming together and put together formal curriculum technology occurs when they're within the district so we thought that was a big wind yeah just

just by merely being involved that was not our objective whatsoever but as we continue to go throughout the school year a lot of flags were going up with the district and and so we see some promising things coming down you don't have to be some cybersecurity you know giant everything they teach you you if you sign up for CyberPatriot you get licenses from Microsoft you get training from Microsoft you get training from Cisco all of that is free literally signing up being a mentor for CyberPatriot so when some free training and guess what if you can teach something you know it by the way there's a CyberPatriot coach from san antonio christian high school right there there you go and this

he's get a rebuilding the year this past year they're ready to go - oh congratulations thank you very much for showing up so I know Rackspace used to do an internship for high school students yeah I'm sorry I just don't know of anything right now yeah but the main thing is stick with it and do well for example this is one of the seniors on my team this is this past year our team he had three different full ride scholarships available to him and I think he picked texting him but what was the other one fairly probably in school on the East Coast but once again those kind of deals were you excel at something like that

the more you do the more you get recognized the more scholarship money and stuff that you can get stuff as well so not that you know don't be shy yeah don't be shy let me tell you this gentleman right here when we attended open cloud Academy and we had our presentation on our program this is when we're building it up he was not shot by enemies after the presentation was over Adrienne approached us and he was what do I need to do talk to me is it hands-on I mean he was asking the questions and it stuck with me and I remember him very very vividly in my mind so I did I did forget his name but

I remember him in our conversation when it was time for dinner he walked in I'm like I remember you without a doubt I remember you so just just continue be tenacious be very very just work yeah yes active in that and you'll see a lot of benefit from code up the code the Texas security security dojo he was we haven't registered earlier they went seventh eighth seventh grade eighth grade yes okay they would happen if I said we forget it so yeah all right serious Wow that's fantastic I think to go back to your point though I don't know what curriculum you guys have but in North side we have a class it's called is M

and so it's independent study mentorship and it's a year-long course so it's part of your requirement to go out and like find a mentor but you would pick a field of study and so senior year of high school I chose criminal justice and my mentor was an Intel analyst for the DEA so well three hours a week out go downtown and I would kind of see what she did and that was part of the curriculum but even if you guys don't have a class like that even reaching out to different companies or different organizations and saying hey you know is there a chance I could shadow you for a few hours after class or something like

that and that way you can begin that networking process it might not be like a paid internship if you're just starting out and you're just in high school but that kind of networking and just reaching out you know asking if you can sit down and talk with them maybe interview that you see how they got into the business or disabled definitely initiatives I mean you can't necessarily but you also tell me good interview process oh she went to another company do the same thing yeah it was my very first like taste of IT I just kind of gotten into the hardware aspect rebel shooting and I went into computer rescue which is kind of like Geek Squad but

there in time I said hey can you guys mind if I you know sit with you for a few days and they let me sit and shadow and they taught me some things and I brought that to my interview and that's one thing that my dad told me that he liked to see in people's that like you're making the effort to go out and learn it on your own and that you know trying to gain that knowledge so it doesn't all have to be like through a degree and then an internship like take through your free time and use that to find something you like attack it head-on and just learn about it yeah I've been in ID for 25 years now and

people will ask me lots of questions because they they say I know things and stuff right yeah I like Ben I haven't stopped learning I'm 55 years old I listen to about 14 hours of podcast 16 hours of podcast a week you know to try and keep up what you say a day a day rapidly but no so if I'm driving to work I'm going back home if I'm gonna getting vehicle that I could do that with I'm listening to a podcast I'm trying to keep up with the latest information from the cyber wire from Internet storm flight cast from all of these other podcasts out there to try and give me the latest information that

can help me secure the bank and and should also try and keep my skills sharp of what's out there what they're the latest attacks were the latest vectors and things that are floating around out there I read a lot of stuff about threat feeds and stuff like that to try and keep my finger on the pulse of what's going on so I can stay current with my technology because if I didn't stay current with my technology I would be by far the finest compact Novell engineer and possibly get your hands on I was a master CNE at one time okay so I don't do that much Novell stuff anymore let's just put it that way

I turned off my last Novell server in 2003 but but that's the deal is you could be you know selling buggy whips okay so you have to stay current if you think you're gonna get an IT and that's it you're done or forget about it you're going to constantly have to continue to reinvent yourself I've done it probably four or five times in my here in the last 25 years and I expect and probably do it two more times at least before I retired so you just got to stay current this guy's done the same thing I mean you want to see somebody good with a chin key this guy's good with the chin I'm saying you know this

guy he mentions this Paul he used to get that was just real quick on that in addition to all this technology and all of his professional background he's also expanded his world he's been involved with the FBI the citizens Academy he's on the board with the local InfraGard chapter and with Isis a he's on the board there so Paul has continued to raise his game across the board in several areas and I just commend him for that I mean Paul he's just an ocean of knowledge and I love that about him and we work closely together and and Michael - Michael C he's a big part of our world to his team because a lot of what we

need to execute on his team is pulling the trigger yeah we haven't got enough hands or fingers to do all the work that's for sure absolutely it's a team effort these interns raised awareness to that we believe in teamwork we value teamwork and creativity there's a number of different skills that we value and and it's showing it he says we're pretty efficient what we do and that's not being being taught by any means so we take a lot of pride in our work and we know that it it pays off by staying abreast of what's out there and and fine-tuning our skills I know it's almost four o'clock if there's nobody here after us anybody want some kid in

Kenny ask questions like oh yeah

anytime that you're talking to professionals about what they do it's very intimidating right but after going through OCA I'm able to follow the conversation I may not know the ins and outs right away but it's going to be up to you to ask the questions because if you don't ask the questions a lot of times they'll just assume that you know what they're talking about so anytime that I'm talking to anybody I don't know a lot so I don't want anybody to have a false understanding that I should know something and then expect me to do something out of assumption so I let it be known right away that okay I understand what a DNS is but what type

of protocol are you talking about it does you know what it's supposed to do and when you've got a good team they'll actually break it down for you and that's the kind of thing that you want to look for when you're trying to get into a job or whatnot is are they willing to teach you are they going to sit down and show you are they gonna just turn their backs on you so going through those TAS awesome they're gonna give me the basics of what to understand the talk and then it's going to be up to you to take it further from there

third program so when we started the first program unfortunately I didn't have a winter program last minute they just kind of summer summer program I've been talking to whitley chambers and she's send to send out email blasts hey probably is looking for an internship here's what they're looking at click on this link and we'll actually if we're allowed to we'll come down and give another presentation to the OCA again if you've graduated you know you unless they send that out but they sent the link out to all graduates over the last two years when we started up the beginning this year so and I think she told us she was gonna do the last 18

months when we did it this past this past season so we presents the current students but she also sent an email to everybody else who's been there you know when I heard besides was coming now I went to the interns Emily tell you like hey besides is coming up submit a paper yeah you need to submit a paper so you can talk about being an intern and of course we never doing a full panel but I wanted to make sure that they they could do that they would be comfortable submitting a call for papers for an event I I'm part of xu+ as a sophomore in high school or next year is a junior submit a paper for

'besides talk about something talk about your experiences with whatever it doesn't really matter you're going to be talking as a professional in IT if you're going to be or better yet in any professional regard so get used to being out in front and talk to people that's pretty patriotic I know them not so college done to me you could talk about sign up a tree and you probably

that's why we keep talking about it yeah also the IOC's got to student scholarships right now yes we do that are available what is more like a two-year program but it's for your program it has to be cybersecurity for Focus has seen a junior student it's a pretty like you're like very narrow in scope like I would say your odds are pretty good I mean like I don't think we have is pretty soon but they're trying to study on my own time I go to UTSA for cyber and during the summer break I'm trying to study I have a CompTIA book and I'm just every week just going through one chat when you take the test

and you feel there's a wire that shocks you know if you fail you guess what you get up you figure out what you did wrong and you go after it again I've taken countless tests over the years I got my first interview in 1994 I'm just saying don't worry bot it was my first time taking a test like that it was very stressful but once you actually get in there it's not too bad really all I did was I read the book and did as many practice quest questions that I could I believe in a lot of the books they actually have they Banco online questions website you can go to and just continually I just kept taking

those practice tests right after that you go you sign up and they do the vein scanner and whatnot and honestly once you get in and sit down there's gonna be cameras everywhere it's just like any other place you just sit there you take a deep breath and you go yeah take your time and it's what 90 questions 90 minutes or something like 60 minutes and question oh this is just focusing don't don't rush and read every question if you don't know it right away go to the next question and come back to flag it to make sure you're able to flag it before then take the test I mean it's it's stressful at first if it's your

first time taking it but once you just sit down take a deep breath just do as much studying as possible because I really really blessed my book because I can't read a book and gonna be able to take a test and pass it I literally have to go to youtube videos I have to try to duplicate some of that stuff on my own for me to get understand you some people can't read a book and pass a test so I had to work extra harder and in doing all that you can do he's gonna take the testers because you failed doesn't mean it's the end of the world you can retake you what is it like a month or so

yeah you retake it yeah yeah yeah only costs double money brings a good point everyone study methods are gonna be different your ability to retain is gonna be different so even though you will be getting ideas from others who are prepared and they're taking a particular test you know what's good for you and you know what I works for you so just keep that in mind what are one of the tips that work well for me over all these years is when I'm doing like a practice test if I fail a question I make extra special note of that question and I try and understand why I got that one wrong did I read the question wrong

did I read the answer wrong did I just didn't have the knowledge in my head to answer that question what do I need to go back and review you know unfortunately a lot of time I just read the question but that's beside the point but so focus on that one of the things that you my hand old radio teacher because I teach amateur radio classes back in the day and I'd give the entire class a test I'd grade those tests and I'd only go over the questions they got wrong for the next class because I don't need to teach them stuff they know I need to teach them stuff they don't know so I've been doing like these total seminar like

videos flashcards this apps you can use I mean there's so many different methods

didn't you kill the next next one next one and that's another thing we've had people in our department that they're very good and test and learning and absorbing something and actually applying it they went from Security+ it was getting ready to expire so three years old they did si si plus past it in what five months later CASP which is the highest level CompTIA security exam that they have for security and they just passed their cissp about other five months later and stuff now we did work only cousins in public six years ago he was from Zimbabwe you got his American citizenship last year yeah he's an unbelievable guy he's so great to work with but yeah he he when he never got to

something he didn't understand or whatever he would seek out Sonny or myself or or Michael and ask questions about individual things that a couple of weeks before a cissp we felt like we were attacking him in the hallways it's sort of like how highs offense got to be before you know like what's a fire suppression for you know what type of fire is a kitchen fire that got it by the way flatware class flask a I'm just saying but you know those are the stupid things that could show up so you want to make sure that they're Emily the FBI