Giving Back: Virginia Military Institute (VMI)
The Cover6 team had the pleasure of visiting the Virginia Military Institute to assess their IT security infrastructure and newly formed Cybersecurity program.
On April 22nd, the Cover6 team had the pleasure of visiting the Virginia Military Institute to assess their IT security infrastructure and newly formed Cybersecurity program. We were excited to see the campus, meet the cadets, and talk cyber with them, but Tyrone was especially ecstatic. With his military ties, he has a special place in his heart for these aspiring cyber warriors. He wanted to be able to pass onto them all the knowledge that he could fit in in two and a half hours.
When we first arrived, we had the pleasure of meeting a few cadets who took up the responsibility of planning out the logistics of the visit. I was then introduced to Mr. Carlos Fernandez, a VMI alumn. After introductions and a very warm greeting from everyone, we went on a short walk over to the Computer Science building to get the business started. All of the cadets were brilliant, and they were already pretty knowledgeable about Kali Linux and its tools. Tyrone spent time going over best practices using Nmap and the Metasploit Framework with them; they had knowledgeable input and questions for him.
After Tyrone’s demonstrations, the whole group tuned into a Cover6 webinar on Buffer Overflows and Shellcode Manipulation. This topic is definitely one of the more complex issues in IT, and it was delightful for us to see the curiosity and fascinated looks on everyone’s faces.
The visit was a memorable and marvelous experience for the Cover6 team. We enjoyed hearing the cadets tell their stories about the times that they tinkered around with the tools and learned something from their experience. Cybersecurity takes a lot of tinkering (and possibly breaking things) to get better at. These cadets knew it wouldn’t be easy, but they radiated a real passion for the subject, which made the trip all the more rewarding for us. We left knowing that our visit left a positive impression on them and on the field of Cybersecurity. We even started a private communication channel with the cadets to be able to keep in touch with them. In the future, we hope to be able to have more opportunities to give back to the community that has inspired us to become the company that we are today.
