WRITTEN INTERVIEW QUESTIONS FOR PHD APPLICATION IN CYBERSECURITY

I have attached a document with all the questions answered with my ideas , i want the document to rewritten with good language proper grammar and good expression and needed to clean to make document to submit .  i have also attached my resume for help and you can see my linked profile for help.

The document should follow the below instructions.  IN THE EVENT THAT ANY OUTSIDE RESOURCES ARE USED, RESOURCES SHOULD BE CITED IN APA FORMAT. SUBMISSIONS SHOULD BE A MAXIMUM OF 500 WORDS OR 125 WORDS PER QUESTION/PROMPT .

 . PROVIDE A BRIEF INTRODUCTION FOCUSING ON YOUR EDUCATION, CAREER, AND DECISION TO APPLY TO UNIVERSITY OF THE CUMBERLANDS.

2. IN RELATION TO YOUR DOCTORAL PROGRAM APPLICATION, WHAT AREA OF RECENT RESEARCH IN THE FIELD WOULD YOU WANT TO STUDY, AND WHY?

3. HOW DOES YOUR CURRENT VOCATION RELATE TO YOUR APPLICATION TO THE DOCTORAL PROGRAM?

4. HOW WILL YOUR EXPERIENCES AND PERSONAL SKILLS HELP YOU TO BE SUCCESSFUL IN YOUR PROGRAM?

5. WHAT LONG-TERM GOALS DO YOU HAVE FOR APPLYING YOUR LEARNING FROM YOUR DOCTORAL PROGRAM?   

1. Provide a brief introduction on your education, career and decision to apply to university of Cumberland.

Right from childhood, I have always been fascinated by computer. I still remember being excited to spend time in the lab with computers around. I still remember my first power point presentation and executing my frist c program I felt achieving something from them on found my administration towards computer.

After completing my bachelor’s degree in computer since I worked for one of the big tech companies in India., wipro technologies , As a freshmen out of college , I experienced the real world problem and had oppurnity to put into practice all the skills I gained in school and stood top in the network and security team . I worked in various technologies like 2 factor auth, email security, core networking during which developed my interest in cyber security.

After working for a little more than 2 years in india moved to united states to study masters.in computer science at university of Alabama in Huntsville with major subjects focusing on network and security , after I worked for capitol one in the soc team as first line of defense for the security after working a year and half with captiol one moved to advertising based tech company Cardlytics as a network and security engineer , after working in more than 6 years in network and security , I want to perceive my phd in cyber security.

2. In relation to your doctoral program application, what area of recent research in field would you want to stand and why?

I would like to research in area of cybersecurity. As the technology grows day by day we have many new ways our data has been utilized in many ways to target us and with having a lot our personal and professional information in online its has become very important very important to protect our data. I personally fall protecting our data. As I personally full protecting our data is our fundamental right with growing technologies it has become very difficult to have security and privacy in today world. I would like focus my research in the space of cyber security to develop and implement better tools to fight for better security with help of AI and machine learning.

I was deeply troubled as one my close member in family is a victim of cyber bulling, understanding we can only have internet safe safe for everyone by protecting every one information . so doing phdin cyber security is both peronally and professionally very close to me.

3. How does your current vocation relate to your application to the doctoral program?

My job as a network and security engineer details with a lot of primary and security relate policies of the company I work for as security engineer I am responsible for protecting my company from both internal and external threats. I better with a better and technologies

And knowledge space of cybersecurity will help understand the lager picture and also provide with more skills that world help me to developed and use more efficient products and help protect not just the safety of the customer but also their privacy which to me is very important in today’s world .

4. How will your experiences and personal skills help you to successful in your program?

I have completed my bachelors’ in a opportunity to understand the basics of the core computing like data structures and algorithms and also took core on operating systems; networks etc and that helped build today’s advanced technologies world. After bachelors working at an multinational company like wipro help me understand the picture when all the can apply the knowledge I developed various skills in configuration and maintaining company ‘s network. then pursuing masks in computer. since new door with advanced level skills and deep understand of networks and security of an organization for then on working in a financial institution like capitol one and advertising company like Cardlytics helped me brush my skills and implement every thing I learned to develop a better user friendly environment with privacy at the center.

5. What long term goals do you have for applying for learning from your doctoral program.

By doing research in field of cyber security that is powered with artificial intelligence where majority of the risks and privacy concerns can be solved with the pattern of data and would like

To develop a bigger picture of understanding on security .

artificial intelligence for venerability assessment and risk management make privarcy centric of everything and develop tools that would help store information and protect it from all the new risks that pose as a global challenge with providing availability and integrity of the information.

Praharsha Kanna Muddana

Email: muddanakanna@gmail.com

Objective: Securing a position which will allow me the opportunity to display exceptional analytical, problem-solving and technical skills within Network and Information Security.

Technical Skills Summary:

Functional Areas	Endpoint Security Management, Network Security and Information Security Management, System Administration, Desktop Support, Active Directory, Help Desk Support, DNS.DHCP
Monitoring & ticketing tools	Remedy, Nagios, HP service manager, Tufin, Hp NNMI, Kibana, Easy IP
Routers & Switches	Cisco 3640, Cisco 3600, 3800, ASR, ACI Catalyst 6500, 4500, 3700, 3500, Nexus 1k, 2k, 5k, 7k, 9k
Routing Protocols	RIP, IGRP, EIGRP, OSPF, BGP V4, MP-BGP.
Vulnerability management	Nessus 4.8, Splunk
Firewalls	Checkpoint (R75, R77), Cisco ASA, Palo Alto
Antivirus	Symantec Endpoint protection, MacAfee
Proxy Servers	Bluecoat
Load Balancer	F5 (BIGIP) LTM VIPRION
Programming Skills	C, C++, SQL, python, bash script, HTML
Others	RSA two factor authentications 7.1

Certifications:

· Cisco Certified Network Associate

· Checkpoint Certified Security Administrator

· Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist: Windows 7 Configuration

Academic Experience:

· Master’s in computer science

2015-2016

University of Alabama in Huntsville

· Bachelor of Technology in Computer Science

2008-2012

GITAM University

Experience Summary:

6+ years’ experience within Information Technology, specializing in Information Security and Network Administration, including both Professional and Academic applications.

Employer: Cardlytics

Designation: Network Engineer II

Period: September 2018 – Present

Responsibilities

• Designed and implemented BGP/OSPF based connectivity solutions for AWS and Extranet.
• Maintain and manage ASA, Juniper SSG, FTD, Palo alto & Zone based firewalls.
• Designed and implemented partner router setup for B2B IPSEC VPNs.
• Manage Cisco Nexus & Juniper based data canters.
• Designed and implemented Meraki wireless network solution for HQ and remote sites.
• Lead a team of Engineers and generate reports to management.
• Build and troubleshoot IKEv1/IKEv2 IPSEC and GRE tunnels.
• Maintain Big-IP F5 LTMs & GTMs, NAC solutions- ISE & Forescout.
• Currently working on ACI and Silver peak SD-WAN data centre build.
• Escalation point for complex network issues and participate in on-call rotation.

Client: Capital one

Designation: Network and Security Engineer

Period: June 2016 – September 2018

Responsibilities

· Troubleshoot Routers and Switches Configuration and work on incident, problem and change management.

· Manage all Datacenter Network Operations.

· Write and implement scripts/configuration on network devices during fault incident, Service improvement Plan, Urgent maintenance activities.

· Maximizing network performance by monitoring performance, troubleshooting network problems and outages; scheduling upgrades; collaborating with network architects on network optimization.

· Troubleshoot the proxy servers and firewalls, Packet capturing to resolve operational issues.

· Troubleshooting network link/device/configuration issues, isolating the problem, fixing the problem.

· Ability to packet capture using tools such as Wireshark and tcp dump. Track the top talkers using riverbed tool.

· Ability to Prioritize, execute tasks and make sound decisions in high pressure situation.

· Undertake routine preventative measures and implement, maintain and monitor network security

· Configure, support, and troubleshoot Checkpoint firewalls and Palo Alto firewalls.

· Tenaciously manage network security environment to ensure it is operating at optimal levels through proactive monitoring.

· Configure, support, and troubleshoot Checkpoint firewalls and Palo Alto firewalls.

· Configure, support and troubleshoot F5 Local Traffic Manager (LTM).

· Configure, support and troubleshoot Blue Coat Proxy SG servers.

· Identifying whether a host is behind a firewall using scripts and other resources.

· Working on firewall traffic logs to determine whether a firewall is allowing or blocking traffic between any given hosts

· Using Tufin to analyse firewall policies to determine whether a firewall is allowing or blocking traffic between any given hosts

· Compare firewall policies from different dates to determine when a specific rule change occurred and who made the change

· Using Tufin Secure Track to compare firewall policies from different dates to determine when a specific rule change occurred and who made the change

· Working on firewall failover events and troubleshooting the issues that caused them and restore them.

· Using Splunk to solve firewall failover issues reviewing firewall system logs in Splunk

· Evaluating the severity of incidents and determining when and how to implement an emergency change to resolve the incident

· Performing all tasks on the Check Point High Severity Checklist

· Running tcpdumps on Check Point firewalls as per client requirements to solve issues.

· Performing firewall pre/post validations during network maintenances

· Opening a support case with Check Point

· Reviewing firewall & proxy traffic logs in Kibana to monitor the health of the company and troubleshoot the issues as per requirement

· Write iRules to assign certain behaviors to individual application-specific connections. iRules can search the content of a traffic, such as an HTTP request or response, and direct the traffic accordingly.

· Insert header data into application-specific requests, such as HTTP requests, and then direct the request based on that header data.

· Using the BIG-IP tools to configure session persistence, based on data such as HTTP cookies, source IP addresses, destination IP addresses, and SSL session IDs.

· Monitor the health or performance of servers in a pool.

· Implementing load-balancing algorithm to assess the current load on a server.

· Enhancing traffic-management performance by configuring the system’s traffic management microkernel service.

· Balancing traffic to tune and distribute server load on the network for scalability.

· Off-loading standard server tasks, such as HTTP data compression, SSL authentication, and SSL encryption to improve server performance.

· Monitoring the health and performance of servers on the network for availability.

· Establishing and managing session and connection persistence.

· Handling application-traffic authentication and authorization functions based on user name/password and SSL certificate credentials.

· Managing packet throughput to optimize performance for specific types of connections.

· Improving performance by aggregating multiple client requests into a server-side connection pool.

· Applying configuration settings to customize the flow of application-specific traffic (such as HTTP and SSL traffic).

· Content filtering management of Controlled access to the Internet as per the company IT Security Policy with Bluecoat Proxy

· Provide Conditional & specific Internet access to specified groups and users as per client requirements in Bluecoat Proxy.

· Inbound & outbound scanning of Emails for virus, Spam & other infections

· Content filtering solution to reduce the unwanted mail volume

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School: University of Alabama in Huntsville

Course: Master’s in computer science

Period: January 2015 – May 2016

Projects

· Computer Networks: Application to measure the sound levels of the things around us and transmit it to another device in the same network to show it graphically – spring 2016.

· Computer Security: Chat application to implement (RSA, DES) algorithms both build-in and programmer implementation – spring 2016.

· Database: An online shopping cart is an e-commerce web application which provides a platform for users to purchase a wide range of products online – spring 2015.

· Computer graphics: Developing a 2D drawing program which allows users to draw 2D objects, programing a 2D robot and animating its motion using 3D camera on OPEN GL and GLUT – fall 2015.

Company: Wipro Technologies

Client: Southern Water Services

Designation: Network and Security Administrator/ System Administrator

Period: June 2012 – December 2014

Responsibilities

· Management of NAV Primary server for Symantec Antivirus Server and updates.

· Ensure all clients are enforced with the EPS policy configuration with Symantec Antivirus

· Management of quarantine and prevent the other systems from getting infected with virus.

· Virus removal on the infected systems by automated or manual process.

· Advice to desktop and server team on virus detection and procedure for clean-up.

· Content filtering management of Controlled access to the Internet as per the company IT Security Policy with Bluecoat Proxy
· Provide Conditional & specific Internet access to specified groups and users as per client requirements in Bluecoat Proxy.
· Inbound & outbound scanning of Emails for virus, Spam & other infections
· Content filtering solution to reduce the unwanted mail volume

· Communicating to the users about new vulnerabilities and patches available

· Monitoring security logs to report events and provide utilization report.

· Authentication Mechanism to Citrix through RSA Server.

· Working on the issues on the RSA Server and resolving them.

· Assigning of RSA hardware tokens to user accounts.

· Complete installation of RSA software token on windows, android, iPhone, desktop, laptops.

· Monitoring logs and generating reports on expired tokens and providing them with new RSA tokens.

· Logging service requests with RSA and working with them to resolve the issue.

· Secure the network traffic over LAN & WAN and access to the applications through company firewall.

· Experience on installing, maintaining and troubleshooting Check Point R75, R77.30 Gaia.

· Demonstrated experience in developing, implementing, auditing Checkpoint firewall (R77.30) configurations and analyzing, optimizing rule sets.

· Hands on experience and good working knowledge with Checkpoint Firewall policy provisioning.

· Upgraded the data center network environment from Cisco ASA 5520 to Checkpoint R77 firewalls.

· Performed routine monitoring of Checkpoint firewall from security perspective and troubleshooting the connectivity issues.

· Involved in configuring Checkpoint (R77) Firewall rule base and objects as per the requirements.

· Troubleshooting checkpoint firewall connectivity related issues using Smart view tracker.

· Experience in reviewing and recertification of rule sets and involved in creation, validation and maintenance of enterprise check point (R77.30) firewall policies.

· Configured ACL’s in Cisco 5520 ASA firewall for internet Access requests for servers, Protocol Handling, Object Grouping and NAT.

· Good experience with checkpoint VSX, IDS, IPS as well as encryption techniques.

· Worked on Checkpoint firewalls in creating and implementing the policies required by the company.

· Migrated legacy Cisco ASA firewalls to Checkpoint firewalls using migration tools in the enterprise environment.

· Preparing and providing the Quarterly, Monthly reports.

· Managing Dashboard of vulnerability management tools like Nessus.

· Vulnerability analysis and reporting

· Secluding scans and implementing new scan templates

· Monitor IP address management, network utilization for routers and switches.

· Preparing and publishing network daily health Checks report on critical links.

· Well versed in Vendor Management on Logging WAN (ADSL, ISDN, IP-VPN, Leased Lines, PSTN) link faults/Service Requests, Hardware replacements on any failures.

· Experienced upgrading Firmware Versions of ADSL Routers.

· Administering network services & troubleshooting network problems

· Administering NetFlow Analyser on all the sites (ADSL, IP-VPN), by observing the traffic and accordingly publishing the report on high Bandwidth Utilization.

· Experienced with switching – duplex, speed changes, port-security requests, VLAN creation, addition & user moves, PCI compliance configurations changes, etc.

· Activating / deactivating ports as per the requirement.

· Providing WAN & LAN connectivity to new customer location.

· Cabling and Patching the PCs to the Network switches.