by Gwendolyn Schanker

Fourth-year computer science student Jake Cardinal explored a lot of new skills in his co-op at Cygilant, a security operations company based in Boston. Among those new experiences was the opportunity to take part in a new marketing initiative at the company: a podcast discussing cybersecurity research practices.

The purpose of the podcast, Cardinal says, was to distinguish Cygilant and mark the company’s contributions within the growing cybersecurity industry. He worked on the podcast along with the rest of a three-person security research team, which includes Director of Security Research Neil Weitzel as well as another co-op student, Michael Napolitano.

Funnily enough, Cardinal and his coworker Napolitano knew each other already: they both did the same co-op at Cigna, a health insurance company in Hartford, Connecticut, last year. For his second co-op, Cardinal knew he wanted to pursue a position in cybersecurity.

“Cygilant stood out specifically because they’re a company that manages security services,” he said. “We ingest a lot of data from our customers, and we look at that data to coordinate response to incidents. This was an area I really wanted to grow in.”

He also enjoyed working as part of a smaller team – three people compared to 14 people at Cigna – and the laid-back atmosphere at Cygilant. On Fridays, the team took time to sit down and discuss trends and historical events in their industry. This helped to fuel the podcast discussion topics.

So far, four episodes of the Cygilant podcast had been posted on the company’s website. Cardinal took the lead on the podcast’s third episode, which focused on patching and patching processes. Patches are pieces of software that are added to a computer program, often to improve protection against vulnerabilities. Cardinal also took part in an episode on gaming security, which was a conversation between all three team members. Though the team developed a general structure for the podcast, Cardinal says the project is still evolving.

“We’ve sat down to talk about what we can do to make it better and more meaningful,” he said. One potential future topic is the data breach that occurred at Target last year, which affected millions of customers and resulted in an $18.5 million settlement by the retail company.

Cardinal says the marketing aspect of his job was something he didn’t expect but makes sense within the changing landscape of the cybersecurity industry.

“I think it’s interesting because for better or for worse we take some of the research that we’re doing and make it marketable,” he said. “I think it’s something the industry as a whole has moved towards.”

In his spare time, Cardinal is an active member of Northeastern’s rock climbing team, as well as the university’s intermural volleyball league. After work, he’d usually head to practice or to the gym – anything to stay active after spending eight hours at a desk. “I love working with the computer, but I don’t like to be super sedentary,” he said.

He’s glad to have spent his working hours as part of a motivated team at an organization that is still, in a lot of ways, in its experimental phase.

“This company is still in its infancy in terms of monitored security,” he said, referring to himself and his team as “guinea pigs.” He learned something new about cybersecurity every day, and is excited to continue that learning process over the course of the next semester.