Sreemoyee Nag opens the DRDO door to a career in Cyber Security. Explore how!

One look at the roster of internships and you don’t have to ask Sreemoyee Nag why hers stands out. The NIIT University student has landed an Industry Practice with Defense Research and Development Organization of India in the Network Security Department. "The prestigious internship with Cyber Security internship at DRDO (SETS India) is a huge honour. It gives me exposure to many new technologies that other companies have not yet adopted," she says realizing that it’s once in a lifetime opportunity that she wants to make the most out of.

DRDO, the premier R & D organization of the country focuses on military technologies. It offered Sreemoyee the chance to work on STIX/TAXII protocol. According to her, it is the most advanced and efficient way to share threat intelligence vulnerabilities, configurations, knowledge and tips with a larger external community. "STIX/TAXII is a very new technology. I made the first STIX format for Covid19 malwares. Since there isn’t a lot of information online I had to make the format from the scratch, which was challenging but satisfying as well," she adds.

Interestingly the selection process for this esteemed internship was fairly straightforward. Sreemoyee tells us that it all began when the CIC informed her about the internship with DRDO. She immediately sent her updated resume and got a response asking for her grades for each semester along with description of projects she had worked on. "That was it, and I was thrilled to be chosen for the Industry Practice at DRDO (SETS India). I sought guidance from my industry mentor to prepare for the internship, which I knew would be quite demanding," she recollects.

From studying cryptographic techniques and security analysis of E-mail applications like S/MIME (Secure/Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions), Storage Area Network (SAN), Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) to learning about STIX/TAXII, Sreemoyee put her best step forward for the IP. "During the internship I learnt a lot more including end-to-end email encryption, which is still a critical problem of recent times. Sharing threat intelligence by STIX/TAXII protocol using Anomali Staxx has been another major learning," she claims.

Following the instructions of her mentor, Sreemoyee is now making STIX format for some of the recent attacks. She speaks highly of her mentor Scientist Kunal Abhishek, who has guided her every step of the way. The experience has not only exposed her to latest technologies but cemented her interest in the field. The BTech Computer Science and Engineering student says, "I am much more confident now and my interest in Cyber Security has increased a lot. I am even planning for a Masters in Cyber Security in future." Now that seems like a Master(s)plan!