I’m Metin A. Açıkalın and coming from Cyprus. I have moved to the Netherlands two years ago for Master’s degree in Computer Science. I followed the Cyber Security specialisation track at the university and graduated as cyber security specialist. I love travelling around and making new friends in the places I visit. I also am a bookworm who loves reading and writing. Other than these two major hobbies; I also like cooking, listening to music and going out with my friends.
As a computer engineering student back in my bachelor degree, I had an interest in computer networking right after my summer internship in Cyprus Vakiflar Bank’s IT office in 2015. Following that year, I went to an official Cisco Education Center to follow CCNA (Cisco Certified Network Associate) course to broaden my knowledge on Networking in professional manners. I did hands on labs and learned essentials for Cisco Switching and Routing. Same year I also attended a 106 hours of System Management course provided by “Foundation of Linux Users in Turkey” which helped me combine my networking skills with GNU/Linux system management. In my senior year, I was an instructor in Computer Networking in technical non-profit courses provided by student association of Computer Engineering Department of my university. After my graduation from the bachelor’s degree, I got accepted in the University of Twente’s cyber security master’s program. During this degree I have studied many different aspects of cyber security. To illustrate, I studied from Cyber Risk Management strategies to hands on experiments on Network security using nmap scans, Nessus vulnerability tool and Metasploit framework. In addition I studied E-Law and computer ethics which helped my gain my attitude of what I should and should not do with my knowledge. These wide range of courses brought me a deeper understanding of cyber security strategies followed in today’s world.
Before graduation, I’ve worked in SIDN (Foundation for Internet Domain Registration Netherlands) as a research engineering intern for my graduation thesis. In SIDN, I learned how to research, develop, produce and work in a corporate company. During my research, I’ve worked on data analysis and machine learning techniques using big data (which was stored in hadoop based warehouse) provided by SIDN Labs. To achieve the goal of researched, I have used the most popular data science libraries of python such as pandas and scikit-learn. In addition I’ve worked with Jupyter Notebook Web Application to program in Python.
With all the knowledge I have gained since I started my education to become a computer scientist, I want to start my career as a cyber security engineer in the fields of network & security, system security and penetration tester. I believe that with all my passion for the sector I am currently in, I am going to become a good employee in a short time combining my theoretical and practical experiences to the company’s needs.