My EEE Internship Experience (EEE AY 20/21 Y3S2)

Hello readers, I just finished my final written paper for Y4S2 so I am back with another post on my NTU undergraduate experience. In this post, I will be talking about my internship in Y3S2. While it has been around a year since then, I will try my best to recall as much as I can. The following are the contents of this post for easy navigation:

The "unofficial" introduction to Professional Internship (PI) for NTU EEE (My Version)

My professional interest and choice for PI

PI Experience

Hindsight and Takeaways

Overall Conclusion

The "Unofficial" Introduction to PI

As everyone knows, engineering courses in NTU require you to do a credit-based internship to fulfill graduation requirements. Most students clear their internship in Y3S1 or Y3S2. In the semester before they officially start, applications will open for students to check out and apply for companies that they are interested in. Besides school-related sources, students can also source their own internships and submit them to the School for confirmation. Note that students are also free to do internships during their holidays but these do not count as credit-based.

In my case, I did my internship in Y3S2 (Jan 2021 - May 2021) at Keysight Technologies Singapore. I got it through InPlace, which is the internship portal for EEE and I think other Schools as well. I was placed there as a Product Security Engineering Intern under their Product Security Team.

My Professional Interest and Choice for PI

Even before the intern application season for my batch came, I had already developed an interest in cybersecurity. I will not go into the details of my interest in this post, but it is safe to say that I was determined to do my internship in a cybersecurity-related role by the time internship season rolled around the corner.

Like any other student, I spent time going through the listings for cybersecurity roles both on InPlace as well as from other sources. In a nutshell, InPlace carries out internship applications in 3 rounds, and students who did not get their first choice companies would then participate in the subsequent round, and so on. For me, I managed to get an interview with a company in my first round choice i.e. Keysight. I was interviewed by the team lead and another engineer and received the offer shortly after.

Besides InPlace, I had also attempted to source from external platforms. One reason is because there are simply only that many cyber-related openings for non-CS students. I do not remember exactly which companies I had applied now but there were a few banks in the pool. At some point, I received an invite from a foreign bank to submit an application to my School for further processing (because this was considered external application and hence needed to be approved first) before they could consider me for an interview. However, I did not proceed with this because by then I had already confirmed my placing with Keysight.

PI Experience

My internship was done during the aftermath period of COVID-19. Since we had Circuit Breaker in 2020 and the situation was somewhat iffy then (think: snap measures), I would say that it sort of impacted the overall experience of my internship at Keysight. For example and according to my understanding, Keysight usually sends their interns to the Malaysia site to expose them to more aspects of the business during their internship. There would also be some intern events for bonding and networking. However, due to the pandemic, all of these were cut. Essentially, we only went to office 2-3 times per week and either stayed in the room they gave to us or went up to interact with the full-time guys (they had a separate room for interns).

Besides myself, there were 2 other interns from NUS. All 3 of us were parked under Product Security, although we worked with different team members from the full-time team. For me, my initial main task was to conduct regression testing on the team's Vulnerability Management Tool (VMT). I will not go into further details for privacy reasons. In the second half, I did some research and came up with proof-of-concepts on using an acquired technology to automate the regression testing process. I had to basically redo all the test cases in the first half and write scripts in a rather obscure language to ensure that testing could be automated for every version release of the VMT.

Hindsight and Takeaways

The following is my thoughts while reflecting on my internship. I've formatted it in a pro vs con template to better convey my thoughts. Hopefully it will help juniors who are interested in cybersecurity to make an informed choice in the future. I will start with the cons before moving on to the pros.

Cons: If I were honest, I would say that my internship experience kind of went off a tangent. I was looking for an internship that could give me exposure to penetration testing. One of the reasons I chose Keysight was because they had advertised the role to include PT. However in reality, I did not do much, if any, PT during my time there. I would say that the team was more focused on the scanning phase of the process rather than on PT itself. As mentioned, the second half of my time was spent doing automation-related work instead of getting practical experience on how to conduct vulnerability assessments.

Also, we were pretty much left to our own devices most of the time. Other than the interactions with the full-time guys during lunch time, there were not many work-related interactions except during the regular standup meetings. Overall, it felt more like a software type of role rather a cybersecurity one.

Pros: That said, the full time guys were mostly opened to talk to the interns whenever we had questions. The talks ranged from work-related to certifications etc. At that time, I was taking my CEH and one of the full-time guys was nice enough to provide test past exam answers since he had already taken it before and passed. Sadly, he took v10 but I was doing v11 so it was not really relevant but at least he was nice enough to help. I remember he also gave me a pep talk on doing OSCP and telling me not to worry too much and just go for it, saying it would be an experience to start doing offensive security from nothing. It was encouraging to have that talk because I was still quite the noob at the time compared to now.

Another nice bit of interning at Keysight would be their cafe. The cafe food was nice albeit a bit pricey. Sadly their canteen was mostly closed (cafe =/= canteen) so I didn't have many experiences trying their canteen food.

Work-wise, they had some cool stuff to play around with that usually require a subscription. I think they had Burpsuite Pro, Nessus etc. Unfortunately I was not aware of these and only came to know about them towards the end of my internship.

Overall Conclusion

"Well, I guess I made my choice so I have to stick with it." would be a sentence that could sum up my experience at Keysight. It's not entirely bad, but I am of the view that there could be areas of improvement. During my time here, I managed to clear my CEH and get some motivation for OSCP, so that could be considered as an objectively good thing.

In any case, I made the choice that I thought was the best for myself under those circumstances, so there is nothing left but to look forward to where the future will take me! :)

As for you, my readers, I hope that you have gained some insight into how internship works at NTU EEE and are better informed to make your own choices. :D

Course Review NTU EEE - EEE Y3S1 AY20/21

Y3S1: Aug 2020 - Dec 2020

General comments on what I did well, what I could have improved on etc will be included at the end of the post. I will also update the final results when they are out.

Each course is broken up into the following parts:

1. Marks and assessment component of the course

2. Course mechanics

3. Short Intro

4. Easy parts

5. Difficult parts

6. Exams/ final paper

7. Tips to do well

8. Overview/ my personal (MIGHT BE BIASED) comments

YEAR 3 SEMESTER 1 (18AU):

MAJ-CORE: EE3080 DESIGN & INNOVATION PROJECT (2AU), GRADED

MAJ-PRESCRIBED: EE3014 DIGITAL SIGNALL PROCESSING (3AU), GRADED

MAJ-PRESCRIBED:  EE3017 COMPUTER COMMUNICATIONS (3AU), GRADED

MAJ-PRESCRIBED: EE4758 INFORMATION SECURITY (3AU), GRADED

GER-CORE: ET0001 ENTERPRISE & INNOVATION (1AU), P/F

GER-PE (STS): CM8002 FORENSIC SCIENCE (3AU), GRADED (S/U AVAILABLE)

GER-UE: AAI08A PIANO ENSEMBLE (3AU), GRADED (S/U AVAILABLE)

CORE/MPE AU CLEARD: 62/61, TOTAL GRADED COURSES:84 /69, TOTAL AU CLEARED: 107/141

Note: I will not be reviewing EE3014 as I do not have much memory of the module. As for CM8002, I will not review it as well as I did not put in enough effort to render a memory of the course.

Brief comments on CM8002: The course gave a lot of case studies which I felt was very interesting. Learnt a bit of history from the course content as well. No labs, only lectures (can't remember if they were pre-recorded from previous semesters or live-recorded every week).

=== REVIEW PORTION ===

EE3080 - Design & Innovation Project (Y3S1/2AU)

Lecturer: ???

Faculty in charge of my group: Prof Ponnuthurai Nagaratnam Suganthan

Marks and Assessment

[I do not remember clearly what the assessment rubrics were. Below is what I can remember.]

Group Presentation: I think we were the second last or something...?

Project Report: ???

Peer Evaluation: ???

Overall Grade: -

Course Mechanics

I forgot what the course mechanics were as well.

Short Intro

DIP is basically a group project module where you will be grouped with a few other students and everyone will work on one project throughout the semester. At the end, the group will present to a group of faculty and will be graded on the presentation. From what I remember, the group meetings are scheduled OTOT and there is no fixed timing, at least that was how it was with my group.

Before the start of the semester, the school will give you a choice of what project you would like to do. You will then submit a list of what you want and get assigned according to your choice of project (unless it is over-subscribed). The available topics include electrical/electronics/computer-related such as AI/ML, Neural Networks etc. My group chose to design some predictive network I think.

Easy parts

As with any group project, being able to work with your team is crucial. I was fortunate as my team could work together with each other. I still keep in contact with some of my teammates today. The strengths of some of us could shore up weaknesses in the others and vice versa. I would say that I enjoyed working this team and am grateful that the really strong guys could tank a lot of the nitty gritty (Melvin, Bo Xiang etc).

Hard parts

Surprisingly, the difficulty came from the un-cooperativeness of the organization we were supposed to do the project for. In our situation, we were informed that our project was supposed to be in collaboration with HTX. We were supposed to help them create AI models to pick out real ID photographs from fake ones. Early on in the project, we requested for raw data from them but were ignored. This incident repeated itself throughout the duration of the project and we finally gave up when we came to the realization that they probably did not view our work as significant enough to bother corresponding with us. I vividly remember Melvin sending email after email to chase them for replies only for them to send a one-off reply towards the end of our project to basically go no further than acknowledge our existence. It was truly disgusting. Also, it didn't help that our prof didn't take too much of a vested interest in our work as well, but what's new right?

Exams / final paper

There is no written exam. We only did a final presentation and submitted a project report.

Tips to do well

Find a group that you can work well with. They will come in very handy especially in situations when you are not sure how to go forward and you have nobody to turn to. Essentially, you will be handling a mini-FYP in the sense that the content could very well be equivalent to an FYP but the weightage and time given to DIP is only worth 2AU. It is in these situations that your groupmates' expertise will save the situation as it was for me. Also, please split the report writing evenly as your group will be writing a report that is around the length of an FYP. Refer to my point on the mini-FYP.

Overview / my personal (MIGHT BE BIASED) comments

Never ever work for stat board projects for DIP, good groupmates are essential, and coffee/tea keeps the productivity up.

==

EE3017 - Computer Communications (Y3S1/3AU)

Lecturer: Dr Michelle (Part 1), Prof Cheng Tee Hiang (Part 2)

Tutor: ??? (I forgot)

Marks and Assessment

Quiz 1 (15%)

Quiz 2 (15%)

Lab (10%)

IRA (10%)

Finals (50%)

Course Mechanics

I do not remember but according to the notes I saved, it states 13 weeks of face-to-face tutorial 1.5h each (excluding lab I think).

Short Intro

EE3017 is the introduction course to network-related topics. It is a pre-requisite for EEE's Computer Engineering specialization because it is needed as a pre-req for EE4718 which is the design course that is typically offered in Semester 2. Some topics taught in this course include TCP/IP structure, some encoding techniques, Wireless/Ethernet etc... I do not remember all the topics.

I was particularly interested in this course because of my interest in cybersecurity. In my later posts, I will talk a bit more about this interest as part of what I've been doing the last couple of years.

The course is partly taught by Dr Michelle who I think is a really good lecturer. Personally, I would rank her on the more extreme end of the faculty who knows how to teach. Till today, I still recall the stuff that she taught in EE3017 in my work.

Easy parts

Because of my interest, I could find motivation to do a lot of the work in this course so to me what is supposedly "dry technical stuff" could be considered manageable. Objectively speaking, I would say the IRA were not difficult. As long as you review the lecture material according to the schedule, you should be fine. As it has been a long time, I do not recall much about the rest of the content.

Hard parts

I would say that this course has a lot to learn about which cannot be covered in the 13 weeks. In my case, I wanted to go beyond what was taught because it was important that I committed certain concepts to permanent familiarity. For example, TCP/IP architecture and IP addressing are very important things to know especially in designing networks. On the subject of IP address, this knowledge is crucial for EE4718 Enterprise Network Design where students are required to design and assign IP addresses to a pre-defined environment. As of this writing, I have not yet started on the course (week 7 already and haven't started... year 4 mentality hahahaha) but off the top of my head, I wonder why they don't just use a DHCP server to do the assignment hmmm...

Exams/final paper

There is a final paper for this. The questions were set half by Dr Michelle and half by Prof Cheng. I cannot remember the content of the course. However, it is good to note that Dr Michelle will conduct a "revision class" sometime around recess week where she hints at the topics tested for the final. It is good to study for those as the other prof usually will not set mention anything about their questions.

Tips to do well

I think that for computer communications or any IT-related subjects, doing well requires having a passion for what you're studying. I would like to define doing well not just by the traditional meaning of scoring well in exams, but to really appreciate what is being taught and understanding them from a practical point of view. After all, 考试是死的 人是活的 and this is true in cybersecurity where exams are not at all reflective of the skills of the candidate and their true worth is assessed by their practical skills. Nevertheless, in the context of EE3017 as an academic subject, I would advice to put in good effort into the topics that Dr Michelle highlights in her "revision class". As for the other half, I really do not know how to advise because the other prof can set whatever they want. Also, remember to put in effort for the IRA because those are easy marks. Lastly, the lab for this topic is NOT HARD AT ALL (ok, maybe to me is not because of my cyber background). It is essentially pinging hosts and recording what you see.

Overview / my personal (MIGHT BE BIASED) comments

This was a very interesting course full of knowledge to learn. Post-semester follow up is highly encouraged to thoroughly internalize the concepts taught, and to facilitate further self-study.

Note that there is a part 2 to this course which is EE4761 (deprecated since AY21/22). I will elaborate more on this in my Y4S1 review where I took the replacement course EE6108 (a Masters course that they gave to undergraduates to replace EE4761).

==

EE4758 - Information Security (Y3S1/3AU)

Lecturer: Assoc Prof Yakoob

Tutor: No tutorial

Marks and Assessment

Quiz 1 (20%)

Quiz 2 (20%)

Essay Assignment (20%)

Finals (40%)

Course Mechanics

EE4758 is the only cybersecurity-related course offered by EEE that is taken as a MPE (the other one offered by EEE called Cybersecurity is a UE). This course touches on some profiles of the threat environment such as the types of threat actors, prevention/detection systems, case studies etc... There is also a significant focus on (extremely easy) cryptography which is tested in the final paper.

Easy parts

From a "real" security point of view, this course is extremely superficial. If I were to draw a comparison between this course and external theory-based courses such as CEH, I would rank this course even lower in terms of difficulty. For example, there is not much depth to the encryption methods covered in EE4758. Some technicalities are touched on but it definitely does not delve into the finer details of encryption. Also, contrary to typical courses on security, this course does not have any practical component to it at all. That means no live machines to practice on, no tools to use, nothing of that sort. It is pure theory content. The essay CA is purely another "research" paper that imo can be fluffed through.

Hard parts

Because the course is so easy, it is hard to score well. There are almost no calculations to perform in the final exam save a couple small encryption questions (iirc was Diffie-Helman or something). Most of the written content can be lifted off the textbook directly. There is really nothing much to say for this course except that for those who are considering a career in security, absolutely do not let this course fool you into thinking that real cybersecurity is this simple. IT IS NOT.

Exams/final paper

The final paper consists of 4 questions each testing on certain weeks' content. As mentioned previously, the questions are largely manageable. Compared to other EEE papers, this is one of those papers where a student can actually finish within the allocated time. Pay attention to what Prof Yakoob mentions during his revision lecture, he will hint at what will come out (but usually encryption will come out since it's the only calculation-based question the course has).

Tips to do well

There is no need to prepare excessively. Do well for the quiz because they are unbelievably easy. As for the essay, it can be settled quite fast if you put in the effort to do your research properly.

Overview / my personal (MIGHT BE BIASED) comments

Personally, I wouldn't bother highlighting this on my resume if I were to apply for cybersecurity jobs after graduation. Will I put it down? Yes. Will I highlight it? No. This is because, and I unreservedly state this, 99.9% of students probably took this course not understanding anything about real cybersecurity at all, and this course does not come close to offering students a glimpse of real-world cybersecurity.

That said, it is an easy A for the book-smart kids who want to maintain their perfect GPA. As with all other courses, this is still an academic module at the end of the day so some might view this course as yet another one to take to keep their GPA high. For me, someone who is genuinely interested in the subject and not the course, I would say that there is much left to be desired in terms of quality content delivery from EE4758.

==

AAI08A - Piano Ensemble (Y3S1/3AU)

Instructor: Ms Yeong Lan Ing

Tutor: No tutorial

Marks and Assessment

Class Part (???%)

Etude (???%)

Final Concert (50%)

Course Mechanics

There is a one physical session held every week throughout the semester. Week 1 is mainly to get to know everyone in class (class size is small, around 10 students) as well as to get the pairings together. Everyone is given an individual etude to practice by mid-semester and then the final concert is held either week 12 or 13 (can't remember). For every week's session, it will usually be some form of music theory/history of piano etc, before everyone breaks into their pairs to practice for the concert. Throughout the course, Ms Yeong will coach each pair to help them prepare for the final concert. Somewhere around the middle of the semester, each pair has to present on the progress of their practice.

Easy parts

-

Hard parts

This course is NOT for beginners. To begin with, there is an existing piano grade requirement to be admitted into the course. It is also helpful to keep in mind that the final concert is a piano DUET, meaning that no solo is allowed. Expect your classmates to be extremely talented as many of them would have already established themselves prior to joining the course. I was in the first batch of students to take this course and in my class there was a FRSM, a few LRs and quite a few Grade 8s/DipABRSM/ATCL. My duet partner was an ATCL and she was amazing.

Exams/final paper

The Etude you get depends on your skill level. You will be assessed based on the piece you present in Week 1 and the Etude will be assigned to you subsequently. As for your final concert piece, you get a choice to pick what you want to present after discussing with your partner. For my class, a few pairs went for French classical including my partner and I (we did Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso). You can also opt to arrange your own pieces which was the case for one of the pairs in my class.

Tips to do well

Practice.

Overview / my personal (MIGHT BE BIASED) comments

I took this course out of pure interest and passion in piano. I went in knowing full well that I would not do extremely well because there were simply too many talented people in my class. I still cannot forget the day when the pair doing Habanera presented their work. I had never seen nor heard such a good live performance before. It really goes to show that those who dedicate themselves to their craft can achieve such impressive feats. Personally to me, this course is a re-affirmation of my passion in piano which is why seeing such great playing motivates me to become a better player!

2022 Update

Hello readers.

It's been a while and my blog is back. :)

For those of you who wanted to read my reviews. I would like to apologize for the sudden disappearance of my blog for the past year or so. Some stuff happened and blogging had to take a back seat.

But to randomly quote Dom Mazzetti: "Here I am, right around the holiday season. Like a dad that went out for cigarettes and just kind of crept back in."

Almost 2 years have passed since the latest post on this blog and naturally, my priorities have deviated greatly from where I left off. I'm currently about 5 weeks into my final semester before graduation (yes, Y4S2 that's how fast time flies haha) and in the midst of FYP, amongst many other things.

Looking back, there seems to be a lot that I could write about from where I last left off. Things such as course reviews, my internship and holidays to simply just how life has been since the pandemic.

I think it is too much to write in one go, so I intend to adopt a more carefree and unstructured way to document everything I have done since then. In other words, I will be doing away with the usual structure from the previous posts. This is also due to my memory of the courses that I've taken being hazy at this point of time which means that adopting the structure would not bring much value to juniors who are curious about the prospective courses.

That said, do look forward to some interesting ideas I have for my subsequent posts:

    Memorable UEs including NIE Piano Ensemble (a graded course)

    My Y3S2 internship at Keysight Technologies

    My current Y4S2 FYP and what I've been up to since 2020?

    More course reviews! (from more recent semesters)

    CCAs and Concerts in a Pandemic (Y4 Eleganza after 2 postponements since Y2!)

    Looking Ahead: What I intend to do and where I intend to go?

I may or may not write about all of them due to my schedule and there is no scheduled order of topics, but I hope that whatever stories I do end up writing may pique the interest of my juniors and blog readers.

As usual, do leave comments if you have any questions and I will do my best to reply them ASAP. :)

Have a good day and stay safe. :)