Building The Future Of Cybersecurity—One Student At A Time

Forbes

22-05-2025

A cybersecurity intern represents the future of digital defense—growing real-world skills through ... More year-round, paid experience that helps close the talent gap from the inside out.
Cybersecurity is a discipline built on trust, precision, and adaptability. As threats evolve, so must the people tasked with defending our systems and data. Yet for all the investment in tools and platforms, one area often remains underdeveloped: the human side of security.
Developing strong, skilled professionals isn't just a workforce issue—it's a business imperative. Effective cybersecurity depends on people who understand your environment, your priorities, and your risk tolerance. But growing that kind of talent doesn't happen overnight, and it doesn't happen in a vacuum. It takes strategy, patience, and often, a shift in mindset.
That's where a reimagined approach to internships comes into play.
As Den Jones, founder and CEO of 909Cyber, puts it, 'When you onboard an employee, it's a couple of months ramp-up. I'd rather pay 35 bucks an hour to ramp them up than 200 bucks an hour.'
Traditional internship programs follow a predictable, often inefficient format: a few weeks in the summer, a steep learning curve, and a handshake goodbye just when the intern is hitting their stride. What Jones and others in the space are pushing for is a fundamental shift—treat interns as part-time employees throughout the year. This allows students to grow with the company and hit the ground running during peak periods.
It's a model born out of necessity and refined through experience. At Adobe, where Jones once led a robust internship program, he saw firsthand how effective this approach could be. Rather than saying goodbye at the end of summer, he'd invite standout interns to stay on part-time during the school year. That continuity paid off.
'Our hypothesis is: twist this round a bit. You grab a student at any time of the year, then they ramp up in summer, scale back to part-time during the semester, and ramp up again in winter,' Jones explains. 'That rhythm makes them far more valuable and reduces the cost and time of onboarding.'
Jones is now putting that philosophy into practice with Intern Connect, a platform from 909Cyber designed to connect employers with valuable cybersecurity interns across the U.S. It's built to make internships easier, more flexible, and more aligned with the real-world needs of both students and businesses.
Students benefit by gaining meaningful, paid experience in their field—often with better pay and more flexibility than typical part-time jobs. For employers, it's a cost-effective way to build a pipeline of junior talent who can evolve into full-time contributors.
This isn't hypothetical. At a previous startup, Jones had interns conduct research and draft an article on AI and security. 'These are projects you might not have time for,' he said, 'but the interns did the legwork, and the content had real impact.' In other cases, he leveraged interns to cover overnight SOC shifts that full-time analysts didn't want.
Hiring is expensive—and risky. Recruiters screen hundreds of candidates. Teams run through multiple rounds of interviews. Onboarding eats up weeks. And after all that, the new hire might still be a poor fit. Intern Connect flips that dynamic. With students working part-time and being paid less during onboarding, the stakes are lower—and the upside is higher.
Plus, companies can evaluate talent in real time, with real projects, and decide whether to extend full-time offers based on actual performance—not just résumés and interviews. That makes internships a powerful filtering mechanism in a high-stakes hiring market.
Jones isn't stopping at matching employers and students. He envisions a future where Intern Connect becomes a talent ecosystem—integrated with bootcamps, colleges, student chapters, and corporate partners. Discussions are already underway with recruiters, universities, and training platforms to build out this vision. There are even plans to offer short bootcamps to accelerate onboarding and help students ramp up faster.
For employers, the cost to join the platform is minimal—$10 a month per user or $100 per year. That low price point reflects a key belief: building the next generation of cybersecurity professionals shouldn't break the budget.
The cybersecurity industry doesn't have the luxury of waiting for perfect candidates. It needs to build them. And platforms like Intern Connect provide the tools to do just that.
Instead of throwing money at job boards and crossing fingers, companies can nurture talent in-house, grow loyalty, and reduce hiring risk.
As the demand for cyber skills continues to surge, the most resilient organizations will be those that learn to invest in the future—one intern at a time.