Tag: graduation2020

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Dipping My Feet into Cyber Security and IT Audit

One of the advantages of the Information Technology and Management program at The University of Texas at Dallas is that it has the perfect curriculum design for learning the fundamentals of many pillars of IT. Of course, it is important to pick one focus and develop your skills in it. But with every passing day, the tech industry is evolving in a way where cross-functions and integrations are the norm. You need to be able to wear many hats. So, it makes sense to explore topics which might not really be your focus, but still fall in the technology umbrella. This is why, I was happy with my decision of taking IT Security and IT Audit and Risk Management, two subjects that enhanced my basic knowledge of some of the most promising and vital aspects of Information Technology.

Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash

My cyber security class, led by the profound Prof. Nate Howe, was eye-opening as it got me well-versed with so many IT risk and security aspects. I understood the entire structure of IT security functions in an organization with a sneak peek into responsibilities of the Chief Information Security Officer. The class took me to interesting avenues like the CIA objective, Business Continuity Planning and Disaster Recovery, ransomware and the anatomy of an attack, TCP/IP basics, secure – SDLCs and IT Control Frameworks. The class ended on a high note with guest speakers and industry professionals coming in to give demos of Kali Linux and penetration testing. It sure got me excited about exploring Kali Linux more, in the future.

The IT Audit and Risk Management class was a lot of fun, despite being so full of theory. This was because of the cool Prof. Joseph Mauriello, who always kept us engaged with his sense of humor and class-end quizzes. This class was the reason I became a member of the student chapter of ISACA – a club that had the best meet-ups and the most delicious food. In Prof. Mauriello’s class, I learnt the fundamentals of auditing IT governance controls, operating system and network controls, types of DOS attacks, and Risks associated with different IT functions and ERP systems. It is thanks to this class, that I know about the ACL software, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, and the Fraud triangle.

The IT Audit group

While these subjects were not in line with my analytics focus, taking them was absolutely worth it as they served as essentials training of fundamental IT concepts. I also made some really cool friends (Hi Micah, Marie, Jeyaraj, Chloe, Diksha!) whom I enjoyed spending classwork and project time with. And that brings us to the professor, whom I have thanked several times but my series cannot be complete without him. I call him Master Yoda for without his guidance, I wouldn’t have been able to walk even two steps in this long path. I’m talking about the Program Director of MS Business Analytics at UTD, Dr. Bill Hefley.

Team Travelytics with Dr. Hefley

You might think that it is weird for me to be talking about Dr. Hefley in a post describing my experience in subjects that do not fall under his Business Analytics domain. But that is precisely why Dr. Hefley is an extremely special teacher to me. I had joined UTD as a MS BA student and had moved to ITM after my first semester as it aligned better with my experience and goals. Despite this, Dr. Hefley has continued to be my guardian angel. As faculty advisor for Travelytics, he has made sure everyone in our team has someone to go to. To me personally, he has been someone I can always write to (and I hope it continues to be that way) or walk up to. Every interaction with him has been warm and comforting. With his fun one-liners and cheerful yet informative emails, he is someone who is always there to cheer me up and keep me going. So, at the risk of boring you with my gratitude one more time, Dr. Hefley – THANK YOU.

ALSO SEE Saying “Hello, old friend” to Statistics and Analytics

This is the ninth post of my #10DaysToGraduate series where I share 10 key lessons from my Master’s degree in the form of a countdown to May 8, my graduation date.

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Independent Study on Desalination – Business Opportunities and Challenges

Yes, this is not directly related to anything else I have done in my Master’s program. But solar desalination was an interest of mine even before I got to UTD. In fact, I have always dreamt of a day when I will have enough money and motivation to start a solar desalination firm to help solve the water crisis. So, when I mentioned this to Prof. Gaurav Shekhar, he was kind enough to agree to be my faculty advisor for an independent study on desalination and its business opportunities. And that is no. 5 in my countdown to graduation!

My weekly desalination meetings with Prof. Shekhar involved a whole lot of brain-storming to come up with questions to be answered, people to be approached, possible routes to be taken. In my research, I went through everything from the process of desalination, and current industry size to challenges, and breakthrough research being done in the sector. I joined the International Desalination Association and interacted with researchers on Researchgate. I tried to look for datasets to desalination with data analytics, and come up with machine learning solutions to reduce operational costs. There wasn’t enough data available on the Internet. I looked into transport and deliver,y but that was taking me in a different direction.

Image: CNBC

Finally, the ray of hope came in the form of a research paper about a fabricated membrane with breakthroughs in the use of solar energy to convert seawater to potable water. I contacted the author and will be trying to pursue this direction in the time to come. At the end, my study report was a comprehensive documentation of the process I followed, the roadblocks I faced, the data I found, and the progress I made in exploring business opportunities in desalination. This was a great exercise in research and management, and I am optimistic that it will yield results in the future.

When I clicked ‘Submit’ to turn in my report, it was the first time that the feeling sunk in – my Master’s degree was coming to an end. My meetings with Prof. Shekhar, one of the finest humans and problem-solvers I have ever met, were coming to an end. After a decade in the workforce, I had taken a break and come back to school. That break was almost over. It was the beginning of the end of an era.

ALSO SEE Keeping My Creative Side Alive with Theatre
Saying “Hello, old friend” to Statistics and Analytics
Diving Deep into Business Analytics with R Programming

This is the seventh post of my #10DaysToGraduate series where I share 10 key lessons from my Master’s degree in the form of a countdown to May 8, my graduation date.

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What Do I Put on My Resume?

For the past 20 months, this question has been answered by two contradicting voices in my head. The first voice, that has the personality of a sane, organized, professional human, encourages me to focus on numbers and metrics, and sticking to the point, and tweaking the Resume as per corporate guidelines, and following pre-defined templates, and using popular keywords. The other voice is a vagabond and a rebel shouting – “Why follow the format? Let’s add pictures and colors and mention everything that makes you cool. How else would you stand out?” Right from the first semester, I have been struggling to settle the dispute between these two voices. As a result, my Resume now looks like their marriage certificate.

Photo by Markus Winkler on Unsplash

Despite having worked on my Resume several times in the past, it took me a lot of trial and error to get to the one I am currently using to apply for jobs. In fact, it is still evolving and changes with most job applications depending upon the job role and company. There are several reasons why it was particularly challenging for me to nail down a good Resume. First – my profile is a bit weird. My experience over the past decade (after completing my Engineering in Electronics and Telecommunication) ranges from Product Manager at an IT book publishing firm to Bollywood actor to flood relief volunteer to travel content writer and team manager to graduate student. Trying to display everything I want in one page proved to be a bit of a challenge.

Second – I am targeting two types of roles – one that aligns more with my past experience and another that aligns with my recent education and career interest. Coming up with two perfect sales pitches for these two different types of jobs was an interesting challenge but something that I thoroughly enjoyed. After a lot of trial and error, and leaving out a bunch of stuff I thought makes me “awesome”, I was able to make some progress.

Thankfully, you are never alone in the resume-building process. My resume-building journey began with the Professional Development class in Fall 2018. I then took a trip to the Career Management Center at UTD where most of what I had put down was crossed out and I was given a new, professional format. It helped me get my experience in the STAR format with metrics showcasing how my work actually accounted to achieving something for my firm. I tweaked it a bit as per my personality. But at one point I got carried away. One of the biggest blunders I made was included a terrible picture of myself working on a project in my Resume, thinking that it will make me stand out. A recruiter at the UTD career fair rightly gave me an earful saying that such a Resume is extremely difficult to read, and the ATS will never pick something like this up.

So, I decided to grow the hell up and act like a professional. I cleaned up the format, removed my picture, and tried to paint it with my words. Over a period of time, I also asked friends and colleagues to review my resume, all of whom gave me great (sometimes contradicting) feedback. I also used a lot of advice given by Austin Belcak on LinkedIn and in his emails (yes, I am a subscriber). Thanks to his expertise and some very helpful tips from major corporations like Google and MIT, I think I have two Resumes that can get the job done. Whether they really get me a job is still to be seen.

ALSO SEE Saying “Hello, old friend” to Statistics and Analytics
Diving Deep into Business Analytics with R Programming

This is the sixth post of my #10DaysToGraduate series where I share 10 key lessons from my Master’s degree in the form of a countdown to May 8, my graduation date.