What notable skills do you bring to the program?

This paper is for a couple of scholarship questions that I have to answer. It’s called Scholarship for Service (SFS), it is a scholarship for students interested in cybersecurity who want to work for the government after graduation. It is stated that each question should be answered with a substantial paragraph. Please answer each question separately.

• What notable skills do you bring to the program?

First, you can talk about work ethics and elaborate on that. I always make sure that I work to the best of my capabilities. My high academic performance at UMBC and at my older community college, which was Montgomery college reflect that. Second, I was thinking about communication skills. I like meeting new people and communicating with them. I feel like networking is a big part of the college experience and I enjoy that. Third, you can say that I have a solid programming skill(I am not saying I am really good but I feel like I have a strong foundation). An example that can demonstrate that would be the fact that me and my teammates were able to win hackUMBC 2019 by developing and building glasses that help visually impaired people. Our project was called “The Vision”, and it was coded in Python. The glasses use voice recognition, image recognition, object recognition and text recognition.

2. Briefly describe your most notable cybersecurity experience to date.

Since high school, I used to be interested in Cybersecurity and I use to experiment with different WIFI penetration testing tools such as Nmap, wireshark, air crack ng to name a few, as a hobby. Learning those tools allowed to me to be comfortable with linux operating system. When I got to UMBC, I was glad to be a part of the Cyber Defense Club (Cyberdawgs), which I attended frequently since my first semester. Being a member and learning new cybersecurity topics weekly such as, windows hardening as well as linux hardening to name a few, and experimenting with tools such as, Metasploit, Ghidra, increased my skillset. Participating in Capture the flag (CTF) events organized by the Cyber Defense Club, and the latest one organized by Booz Allen Hamilton at UMBC, allowed me to apply things I learned from the club meetings, which I really enjoyed. Attending CDL meetings (another cybersecurity related weekly sessions) frequently was very educational and enjoyable for me as someone who is passionate about cybersecurity. I am also currently studying for security + certificate on the side. I will be taking the examination by the end of the spring semester.

3. What are your career plans after completing the SFS program?

I want to work for the government, and I want to do incident response. Please elaborate on that. The answer for this question has to be a substantial paragraph like the two questions above, so feel free to add anything that you feel would be useful.

4. What area of cybersecurity interests you the most?

Incident response interest me the most. Add a couple sentences related to my answer. This question can be answered with 3 or 4 lines and doesn’t need a paragraph like the others.