By ALICIA FEYERHERM
Tiger Media Network
Throughout college, internships are highly sought after. In addition to coursework, employers like to see that students have work experience in their field. However, many summer internships require students to move and negotiating short-term leases or other living arrangements can be difficult. Post-COVID internships are also becoming increasingly competitive.
To combat some of those hurdles, the Cybersecurity Institute and Technology Incubator (CITI) has developed a Micro-Internship program. These “micro-internships” are 20 to 50 hour projects that students will work on for a small business.
“We saw a huge decline in internships after COVID,” CITI Director of Operations Jason Zeller said. “And even now that they’ve started to make a comeback, you still have those other issues like housing.”
Some of the services offered to small businesses are:
- Website Security Evaluation
- Security Vulnerability Report
- Deploying Data Privacy and Security Controls
- Designing Security Training
- Application Security Evaluation
- Software Testing
- Data Clean-Up
- Development of Documentation or Compliance Protocols
According to Zeller, 61% of all small to medium businesses have reported at least one cyber attack during the previous year. Cyber attacks can be detrimental to small businesses, especially those who may not have the financial stability to recover from such an event. These micro-internships improve businesses’ cyber security posture, helping businesses protect themselves against cyber threats.
“The whole goal is to have an economic impact on small businesses, so in this case, making sure that we’re protecting them so that they don’t get hit with ransomware,” Zeller said. “It’s really focused on economic impact.”
Not only do small businesses benefit tremendously from this partnership, students also receive payment for their services. Students will be paid $400 per micro-internship.
“Students can take as many as they want,” Zeller said. “So when they apply to be a micro-intern, they’re put on a list and it’s kind of a round-robin type scenario.”
After students complete a certain number of micro-internships, they can receive internship credit to go towards their degree. That way, students are not only getting paid, but also furthering their degree.
Students can apply to become an intern at https://www.fhsu.edu/citi/. Small businesses can also request services on that same site.
This year is the first year of the project, but by year two, the goal is to have at least 50 micro internships.
The micro-internships are funded by the State of Kansas as a legislative line item, and Zeller hopes to expand the reach of the micro-internships once the program becomes more established.
For example, he mentioned potentially partnering with two-year schools and having students dispatched from those institutions to projects that would be a longer drive for Hays students.
“Our goal is that we make sure those students are trained in the same standard that they were here and we would work with somebody at that facility to dispatch them out,” Zeller said.
Right now, however, the micro-internships are in the very early stages.
“Since we just started this semester, we haven’t really ramped up yet,” Zeller said. “We’re working to hire a Director of Business Relations to travel out to western Kansas and drum up business from businesses and then we’ll pair students with projects.”