Ben Fuller ’21

Security Engineer Intern at PayPal

Major: Operations and Technology Management

“I worked with the bug bounty team as an intern that will be shadowing their team members and other team members across PayPal's cyber security work force. I will be doing this internship remotely. My tasks include sitting in on meetings, working on a project to aggregate data from the bug bounty teams findings and making them into an interactive database. I also set up meetings with groups relating to the project to better develop the project for internal usage in PayPal and learned about the bug bounty teams function and how to classify and report on bugs.

I wanted an internship that would allow me to grow my understanding of cyber security and allow myself to see how different teams work together to strengthen an organization’s security posture. Also, I had been in contact with my manager for this internship 6 months before I was even formally offered the internship. I had gotten into contact with Ray before the internship to just talk about what a Bug Bounty program is and how it helps a business’ security posture. I believe that internships are incredibly valuable for a plethora of reasons. For one it can give you hands on experience working in the industry you are going to school for and help you understand that industry from an insider’s perspective. This can help you figure out whether you really want to work in that industry or possibly look for opportunities elsewhere. In my case my internship allowed me to get experience in an industry that I was very interested in and had no previous academic schooling in. This allowed me to have an incredible experience and see how skill sets can be translated to other industries. I also was able to see how quickly you can pick up new information, technology, and concepts in a work environment when you are on a team of collaborative teammates. Also, getting a few big presentations out of the way in a professional setting is always good practice!”