Software Engineering Institute

Cybersecurity is a rapidly growing field that becomes more complex as time goes on. There are numerous aspects of security that branch out into their own equally complex fields. Many companies and organizations struggle to properly prepare for attacks against them, and fail to utilize threat intelligence or offensive security measures to mitigate these attacks.

This project aims to take data gathered by honeypots to enrich reports that can be provided to cybersecurity experts to improve their security posture. While honeypots and threat intelligence are properly established in the field and have copious research behind their workings and capabilities, the knowledge around applying them to a readable format is limited. This research aims to bridge that gap between threat intelligence and security hardening. The project will be accomplished by creating a virtual network that emulates an enterprise network. Offensive security mechanisms will be installed on these machines in the appropriate sections to produce the results needed for enriching reports.

Caitlin M. Allen is a graduate from Champlain College with a degree in Computer Networking & Cybersecurity now working for Stripe as a Security Ops Analyst. Prior to making the transition to working in financial technology, Caitlin worked for Managed Services provider, NuHarbor Security, as a Threat Analyst. During her internship at NuHarbor, she became interested in threat intelligence when working with the intelligence team to find indicators of compromise, shadow investigations, and collect data for reports.

While at Champlain, Caitlin was the Communications Lead for Women in Technology club and a member of Cyber Security Club and Digital Forensics Association. Caitlin will be presenting her Bachelor's Capstone Research on Enriching Honeypot Data using Cyber Threat Intelligence which is co-authored by fellow Champlain alumni, Adam Cunningham.

Outside of security and intelligence, she is a dressage rider who has shown up to First Level and enjoys continuing to learn dressage to eventually make her way to Grand Prix and learning to train horses with positive reinforcement.