60 St. Vrain Valley incoming seniors attend cybersecurity mini-internships
60 St. Vrain Valley incoming seniors attend cybersecurity mini-internships
https://www.timescall.com/2026/06/12/st-vrain-valley-ccybersecurity-internships/
Publish Date: 2026-06-12 15:39:00
Source Domain: www.timescall.com
Using an unordered list, summarize the following article with between 4 and 8 key points. About 60 St. Vrain Valley rising high school seniors are helping local businesses beef up their cybersecurity through a two-week, paid mini-internship program.
The students, in sessions held at Silver Creek and Skyline high schools this month, spend the morning learning about the The National Institute of Standards and Technology, or NIST, Cybersecurity Framework and hearing from those who work in cybersecurity. In the afternoons, they work in teams with businesses to to conduct security audits.
Students from the cybersecurity P-TECH program speak during a practice interview at Silver Creek High School in Longmont on Thursday. (Joel Solis/Staff Photographer)
“We’ve learned a lot,” said Silver Creek rising senior Mica Friedly, who attended the first session and will work as a teaching assistant for the second session. “There’s going to be a lot of stuff I take away. Even if I don’t go into cybersecurity as a career, I can keep myself safer.”
Along with cybersecurity training, students took field trips to NIST and Metropolitan State University of Denver. The internship culminates in a final presentation where students present their cybersecurity solutions to parents, industry professionals, higher education representatives and business owners.
St. Vrain is using about $90,000 in grant money to pay the students, who make $20 an hour and also earn a certification and class credit. Participating businesses and nonprofits include Longmont Florist, Up-A-Creek Robotics, Longmont Library, Circle Graphics, Habitat for Humanity and the Latino Chamber of Commerce of Boulder County.
“We’re helping these small businesses and saving them money,” said Silver Creek cybersecurity instructor Beth Cerrone, who based the mini-internship program on a similar opportunity she developed for low-income high school students in Washington, D.C.
Most of the students are in the early college P-TECH programs at Silver Creek and Skyline. For P-TECH, or Pathways in Technology Early College High Schools, high schools partner with businesses, who provide mentors and internships, and community colleges. High school students in the program have up to six years to earn an associate’s degree at no cost.
Silver Creek incoming senior Gavin Brown, who is considering majoring in civil engineering, said the P-TECH program provides both free college credit and experiences like the mini-internships. Plus, he said, cybersecurity is an interesting focus area.
Beth Cerrone writes critiques during a practice presentation of the cybersecurity P-TECH program at Silver Creek High School in Longmont on Thursday. (Joel Solis/Staff Photographer)
“With all tech, no one knows everything,” he said. “I get to learn from a lot of industry people.”
The rest of this summer’s participating students are taking cybersecurity classes at the school district’s Innovation Center. The Innovation Center piloted a similar, one-week mini-internship program last summer.
Niwot High rising senior Liz Robbins, who started taking cybersecurity classes at the Innovation Center in middle school and participated in the mini-internship pilot, said she plans to study cybersecurity or computer science in college. For the security audit this summer, she’s working with Longmont Florist.
“This is a great way to get real world experience,” she said. “It’s really cool to help out these small businesses. They depend heavily on third parties. It’s great to see how all these concepts and skills apply, even if you’re business only has five computers total. I’ve loved it.”
On a recent day, students heard from St. Vrain information security engineer Alexia Blackwood, who led them through an exercise on cyberattacks that ask for a ransom. She said whether to pay the ransom can be a moral and business decision. While she has a strong ethical dislike for paying ransoms, she said, she understands when a business pays because it needs to resume operations fast. Cybersecurity insurance often covers the cost, she added.
“It’s an unsettled ethical dilemma,” she said.
Dan Massey, who works for the National Science Foundation’s Office of Advanced Cyberinfrastructure, also talked to the students about his office’s top two cybersecurity research priorities, quantum computing and artificial intelligence. AI, he said, is making it faster for those who work in cybersecurity to find bugs and gaps to increase protection. But, he said, it’s also making it easier for those behind the attacks, including allowing them to generate harder-to-detect phishing emails.
“It’s a little bit of an arms race,” he said.
Massey, who has worked with Cerrone on previous cybersecurity programs, said he’s always looking for opportunities to encourage young people to go into cybersecurity.
“Cybersecurity is adversarial thinking,” he said. “You’re competing against someone out to do harm. If someone likes to think outside the box to deal with unexpected situations, they’ll do well.”
Silver Creek Assistant Principal Karen Norris said this summer’s mini internships are preparing the P-TECH students for the full, 135-hour internships they’ll have next summer. For the mini internships, students created resumes and went through interviews before they were assigned a company.
Silver Creek rising senior Cory Mandeville said this was her first time writing a resume and interviewing.
“It’s my first real job,” she said. “It’s my first experience applying what I know. I’ll have all this knowledge after high school.”
