Cyber Security Summer Intern Review

I really enjoyed my internship with PwC. I was placed on the Ethical Hacking team within the Cyber Threat Operations business unit. We had an excellent 3 day induction at a hotel where we met all of the other new interns and did some training for our internship. Since then, I have been in the Embankment Place office and I have had a great 6 weeks working on interesting client engagements and learning about ethical hacking.

I felt really valued by my colleagues. Every time I completed any work I was given great feedback and members of the team often asked me if I could help with their engagements. All of my colleagues were really welcoming and they made me feel like a part of the team from my first day.

Any time I had questions about the work I was doing, ethical hacking, admin tasks or anything else, there was always someone there to support me. I learnt a huge amount from my colleagues and I was never left in the dark. When it came to technical challenges, I was often encouraged to work out how to do things myself, which I believe was good for learning.

In my first week I was assigned on a client engagement, which I worked on for about 3 weeks. During this time, I was busy every day and constantly had something to work on. After this engagement finished, I did smaller amounts of work on a variety of different engagements and shadowed colleagues from ethical hacking and a couple of other teams. Most days I was busy, but some days when the office was quiet there were less people to shadow and less work to help with.

I was given a lot of responsibility on my internship. On the first engagement I was on, I was given important tasks to complete and I feel like I made a significant contribution. I spent one day on client site which was a great experience. While helping with other engagements I was given important tasks to complete. When shadowing I had less responsibility, but it was a great chance to learn.

The skills I developed will be very helpful in my degree and beyond. The cyber security and general technology skills that I picked up during my internship will be useful during the final year of my Computer Science degree. I also developed many general skills such as client communication that will be useful throughout my degree.

The atmosphere in the office was great. The ethical hacking team were friendly and welcoming throughout my internship and they were always up for a chat during breaks from work. The office had a more relaxed atmosphere than I thought it would which made it a really comfortable working environment.

The internship was very well organised. It started with a three day induction at a hotel for all of the new interns nationwide. This involved a packed schedule of training activities and opportunities to meet the other interns and our new colleagues. After that, I was assigned to a team at a specific office and they had plenty of engagements lined up that I could help with.

PwC invested in me a lot in terms of personal training and development. The three day induction in Windsor included about 2 days worth of training before I started working in the office. Since joining the ethical hacking team, they have walked me through engagements, shown me how to use various tools and given me plenty of resources that I have used for learning.

Future employment prospects are very appealing with PwC. If I am fortunate enough to be offered a graduate role, I will have the opportunity to rejoin the same team and carry on doing similar work to the work I did during my internship. PwC seem to have a excellent opportunities for training and career development.

The three day induction was a great opportunity of get to know the other interns. Myself and the other interns in ethical hacking were great friends during the internship and we went to several after work events together. There was a weekly after-work drinks event in the office where I got to chat to some of my colleagues.

As I am from London I was lucky to be able to live in my family home during my internship. However, the cost of rent for interns who had to find accomodation was very high. On most days, tube travel would cost around £6 and lunch would cost around £5-7. Bars and clubs are pretty expensive in the area as it is central London.

The pubs in the area near the Embankment Place office were great for after work drinks, but drinks prices were expensive.

There are various activity clubs at PwC, involving things such as sport and drama. I chose not to get involved in any, but the opportunities were definitely there.