In a company with complicated systems in place, sometimes a fresh perspective makes all the difference. At Sierra, we’re excited for the opportunity to help teach young professionals, and we learn a lot from their new perspective. In this month’s employee spotlight, we’re featuring one of our younger team members, Miles McLaughlin, Server and Network Operations Engineer at Sierra Experts.
Miles currently attends California University of PA, where he’s working toward attaining his Bachelors of Science in Computer Information Systems in May of 2017.
Initially, Miles was studying security, a subject he’s been passionate about since his early teen years. As he entered the field of study, though, he found that the programs available were limited. Before attending school, Miles took learning network security into his own hands. He says that he spent a significant amount of time learning security bit by bit, reading and completing challenges.
In his role at Sierra, Miles performs a wide variety of tasks. He troubleshoots customers’ technical issues and performs audits on customer networks and servers. During the audits, he looks for necessary updates and potential security risks.
Miles mentions that his favorite part of his work at Sierra is that he’s always being challenged and learning something new. At school, he focuses primarily on programming, while at work, he’s learning a lot more about networking. He says that being able to work directly with servers, active directory (AD), and virtualization has been a valuable experience.
Speaking of his goals for the future, Miles notes that he’s working toward attaining his CCNA. He’s already attained his CCENT certification, so he’s close to his goal. He would like offensive security, like penetration testing, to be a large part of his career.
In his spare time, Miles spends time gaming and with friends, along with some tech hobbies that overlap with his work. Miles is also a volunteer for Boy Scouts of America.
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Sierra Experts is an IT Managed Service and Support provider, specializing in remote monitoring and remote management of computing systems, cloud/virtual systems hosting, VoIP/SIP PBX trunks and solutions, physical server hosting, software development and hardware and software reselling. For more, check out sierr001-2.sierradevops.com
