Cybersecurity grad headed to Linkbank

Entering her senior year of high school, Grace Schlauder ’23 couldn’t decide on a career path. After realizing all of her friends were coming to her with technology problems she could easily solve, she found the cybersecurity major at Messiah University.

She interned for Linkbank the summer and the fall semester of her senior year, then accepted a part-time position at the company’s Camp Hill, Pennsylvania, location as an information technology (IT) support analyst for her final spring semester. In addition to general cybersecurity maintenance, she has taken over some long-term projects for the company and is in charge of the new hire process and termination. After she graduates, the position will become full-time.

“Linkbank is huge on promoting a good work culture and the people there are amazing,” she said.

She found several classes that were essential in teaching her about cybersecurity as a career, starting with Introduction to Cybersecurity. “Just knowing that there are different options that I could choose was very helpful and inspiring,” she said.

Another class, Information Assurance, made the transition to her internship easy.

“A lot of what I was doing was related to that class, as well as doing risk assessments. There are scales of scoring different areas of risk. There are all these different parameters to go through to score would happen if we had a ransomware attack on the company and I presented this to them,” she said. “Then they discussed the process of what would happen if that situation occurred.” how safe and unsafe it is and the level of risk the company would assume because of it and the likelihood of it happening,” she said.

She also helped Linkbank move their headquarters building to a new location.

In addition to tackling information assurance, Schlauder took on several projects, including presenting to the company executives. “I got to lead a tabletop exercise, so I came up with a fake scenario to see what

“I had to be in the network closet connecting cables, and they said, ‘You probably wouldn’t enjoy this,’ but I said, ‘Please let me do this, I love it.’ I had never done something like that before,” she said.

Schlauder is one of only the second class graduating with the cybersecurity degree and found the new cybersecurity lab to be a useful resource.

“I think it’s super cool. They have four projecting boards and it’s very technological and involved. It’s a great hands-on space,” she said.

Her dream job is to work at Google someday, but for now she has is excited to keep learning about cybersecurity through the banking industry.

“You’re always learning in this field because technology is always changing,” she said. “I didn’t know anything about banking, but I’ve enjoyed it so much because I get to learn about banking as well as cybersecurity.”

— Molly McKim ’23